Fragile Speedster / Video Games

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Action

• Brawl Stars:
  • Max is one of the most mobile Brawlers in the game, and can basically outrun any opponent, but her medium amount of health makes her unsuitable for all-out combat. Her blaster can rack up quite the damage, making her a bit of a Glass Cannon as well.
  • Stu isn't as fast as the former, but his Dash Attack that he can spam frequently makes him evasive enough to make up for his fragility.

Action-Adventure Games

• Assassin's Creed II has both thieves and Agile-type guards. They can keep up with Ezio doing Le Parkour — normal guards can freerun too but can't keep up — but aren't that resilient or powerful. Even early-game normal guards can do a number on thieves if you don't help them. "Agiles" are the only guards fast enough to actually catch up to Ezio in a straight, unobstructed run on flat terrain, but all counter kills are immediately lethal against them, and unlike regular guards they can be tired out by the player constantly attacking them.
• Catwoman in Batman: Arkham City. Compared to the boys, she has much less health but is far faster (though Nightwing may be faster in some areas). She also has limited options in combat (3 tools max), causing her to be much more reliant on dodging.
• BROK the InvestiGator:
  • Graff, fittingly, is the polar opposite of his Mighty Glacier father Brok. He attacks with quick jabs and kicks and a swift sliding kick that has incredible reach, making it easy to pulverize enemies with a series of combos. He also is much faster than Brok, thereby giving him a bigger window to evade attacks. However, his attacks do little damage and he's far less durable compared to Brok. Fighting someone like Dart is suicide, given that enemies of his caliber can drain almost all of Graff's health with a few well-timed punches.
  • Kins is the skinniest and weakest member of the Squealers. That being said, he's also the quickest and he possesses the same sliding kick attack Graff has, which is almost impossible to dodge and can break your combos.
• Castlevania:
  • Grant Danasty from Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse is fast and can cling to surfaces, but takes more damage from enemy attacks than the main character.
  • Similarly, Maria Renard from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood moves faster than Richter, has a slide attack that allows her to tear right through the bridge part of Stage 7, but she has even less defense than Richter, both in Rondo and Symphony.
• Killer7: Con Smith can burn blood to run extremely fast and has the least health of any member of the Smith Syndicate.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: Wosu move very quickly, but go down to a single slash of Link's sword no matter his current strength.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: The humble crabs go down to a single attack from a sword (or any other weapon capable of damaging them), but they move quickly and erratically (and, incidentally, hit like trucks). They can be especially troublesome in the randomizer, as they guard a common early-game item check and are often encountered before Link has any health or defensive upgrades and often before he even has a weapon to fend them off with.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Majora's Incarnation moves ridiculously fast, but it only takes one hit to be stunned.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games: Vire can fly and quickly dash out of Link's sword swings, but has minimal defenses.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess:
    • Wolf Link moves faster than his Hylian form, and can theoretically clear out large numbers of enemies with Midna's One-Hit Polykill ability. The problem is that he can't block attacks due to lacking a shield, and enemy attacks hit harder since he can't wear armor either. Even the aforementioned One-Hit Polykill isn't a guarantee of success, it only takes one enemy hitting him to cancel it.
    • Link's Zora armor lets him move much faster in water (and lets him move, and breathe underwater, which the others can't), but it makes him take double damage from fire and ice attacks.
    • Many enemies fall into this territory, dying in only one hit but running/flying away (rats, keese, bombskits) out of range (and more often than not they show up in swarms).
  • The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass: Jolene is extremely fast and agile, but cannot withstand more than four strikes from Link.
  • The Yiga clan in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are annoyingly speedy and teleport around a lot, but tend to go down in just a few hits from any decent weapon.
• Metroid: Other M: Compared to other games, Samus feels like this with the odd recovery system where you need to stand still to charge up to recover at low health. This means that you can't heal most of the time. And she is very fast and can do ninja like dodges. In Hard mode, you are restricted to just 99 health, and so many attacks can OHKO you if you get hit, making her even more fragile. Samus can literally tear through rooms lategame at high speed.
• Night in the Woods: The Game Within a Game Demontower gradually makes the player character into this. Each new level, you get another dash charge, but lose one heart of health. On the final level, you're a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
• Nobody Saves the World: The Rat form is small with a weak defense, but that doesn't matter due to it being one of the faster forms and how ludicrously fast its basic attack is, building up Mana faster than any other default attack and chipping away at enemy health just as quickly. It helps that the first attack it learns is Consume.
• No More Heroes actually has a Fragile Speedster as a Boss: Jeane has remarkably low health for a boss, but can counter your grabs, dodge almost all of your attacks, and moves incredibly fast.
• [PROTOTYPE]: Helicopters are the only vehicles capable of outrunning Alex Mercer, by halfway through the game; however, they can be taken down by two, normal, non-musclemass enhanced flying kicks.'.
• Red Dead Redemption: Horses can outrun any predator in the game, and for good reason. Taking even a nibble while riding one will send you falling faster than you can draw a gun, and that's fast.
• Resident Evil: Zombie Dogs run faster than the player and have long range jumping attacking but their health is generally lower than the average zombie. In the RE2make they are tricky to deal with out in the open, but you can kill them with just a knife up close.
• Tomb Raider: Lara Croft from the CORE-era games is a nimble acrobatic speedy jumper who's health bar drains like a sieve if she gets cornered or pinned down. Even early-game enemies can casually take chunks out of her health, getting trapped in a corner is practically a death sentence, she staggers easily from most attacks, and any human enemy who gets a bead on her will empty her health bar in seconds. The problem is, for her opponents that is, is the way she locks onto them with her pistols, never needs to reload magazines, and can just keep hopping around, running away, and leaping to high-ground, is she can carve a swath through them without them ever even getting close to her.
• Yakuza 3: Rikiya is an evasion-based version. While he never has more than a single bar of health, his mobility, swift recovery and ability to block or dodge nearly anything you can throw at him from the front makes it extremely difficult to actually deal any damage to him.

Action Role Playing Games

• The Aethra Chronicles's Chrissta has a movement of 25 (high in this work), but does not hold up well against enemy attacks.
• Dungeon Crawl: The spriggan race plays this trope straight, with extremely high movement speed, very low hitpoints and mostly abysmal weapon proficiencies. Some builds though, especially Spriggan Berserkers focused on short blades, can possess some serious damage output, being more of a Glass Cannon and way too often relying on Death of a Thousand Cuts.
• In The Elder Scrolls, the Redguards fit this role out of the races of Men. Of the races of Men, they typically have the greatest natural athleticism and a preference for lighter armors which allow them to keep this advantage (and are simply more practical in their desert homeland). They are, however, typically more "fragile" physically than Imperials or Nords and are certainly more "fragile" magically than the Bretons. Those who excel exceptionally in swordsmanship, their favored cultural weapon, can add the punch of a Glass Cannon as well, essentially making them 2/3 of a physical Lightning Bruiser.
• With the Small Frame trait in Fallout: New Vegas, the Courier's Agility is increased, but their limbs are more easily crippled. From the same game there's the Cazadors who are quite fragile if you've got enough firepower, but they move terrifying fast and their poisonous stinging attacks will be quicker than your bullets, lasers and plasma shots.
• In Fallout 4, Dogmeat's Agility and Perception stats are at 14^note The cap is normally 10 and he can also run much more quickly than any other companion. However, he has 35 fewer hit points than most of the others, and of course being a dog he can only equip certain dog armors which are statistically inferior to human and super mutant armor. His relatively small hitbox does help him out, though.
• In Final Fantasy VII Remake Tifa starts off as this, overlapping with Glass Cannon. She has the best speed attribute in the game and can bltiz around the battlefiled and avoid attacks with her mobility and she's strongest after Cloud. However compared to Cloud and Barret, she has low health and durability and will take a lot of damage if she can't dodge. You can amend this by boosting up Tifa's HP and defense, like giving her good armor such as the Champion Belt, turning her into a decent Lightning Bruiser by Level 50.
• Ivan and Sheba, both of Golden Sun, are very much fragile speedsters, lacking in health but having a high speed. Since that only affects turn order, which doesn't amount to much, they're also blessed with a high amount of Psynergy Points, meaning they can both rain down their spells with impunity.
• In Knights of the Old Republic Mission Vao has low hit points, but a very high dexterity and skills like slicing and repair that could thin the ranks of her enemies, or stealth to sneak right past them.
• Meru in The Legend of Dragoon has the highest speed and lowest health of any character on top of having the second lowest physical defense.
• Luminous Plume: Valerie as a boss is faster than the Black Blade and has powerful multihit techs, along with a tech that allows her to teleport to a target's location, but her HP is much lower and her lack of ranged attacks means she has to risk close combat. As a guest character, she retains her speed, but can fall quickly on Nightmare mode due to her lack of regen effects.
• In Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, Nash is the archetypal Squishy Mage mage who only utilizes one element (Lightning) and the typical slew of useless status-inflicting spells. His speed is ridiculously high though, which gives him considerable merit as a support character - give him some revive items and Star/Silver Lights to restore MP and he'll go a long way in keeping the party in the fight.
• In multiplayer Mass Effect 3, the Drell Adept and Vanguard fit this role; they are incredibly fast, but they have weaker barriers than any other class.
  • The M-44 Hammerhead tank skirts the edge between this and Glass Cannon — it's fitted with a really powerful gun and is very nimble, but bursts into flames if the bad guys so much as look at it funny.
• In the Monster Rancher games, the Hare and Pixie characters are rated very highly on the speed factor. However, they have low defense.
• Monster Hunter:
  • The Sword and Shield weapon. The striking power of each hit is not great, the reach is horribly short, and the guard while at least present is nothing to write home about. The weapon does however allow for rapid strikes and running while drawn and with the often powerful elemental damage, the trusty Sword can be deceptively powerful. Subsequent games turned the Sword and Shield into a versatile Jack of All Stats, with buffed per-strike damage and the unique ability to use items while drawn as well. Which brings us to...
  • Dual Blades. Even quicker attacks and a Demon mode to really unleash flurries of blows, but no guard to speak of. This weapon is pure Death by a Thousand Cuts.
  • The Insect Glaive is a spear with an insect mounted on one end, which you can command to bite monsters and leech out "extracts", which you can then drink to gain various power-ups. It possesses the ability to make soaring leaps, something almost no other weapon can do. However, it doesn't have much in the way of defenses...until it gets all three colors of extract, at which point it gains significantly improved jump height, a different attack chain, immunity to some monster roars, and increased Defense.
  • Of the three Gunner weapons, Bows and Light Bowguns are most definitely this. The former gets a special sidestepping dodge while charging its shots; done correctly, your hunter will be about as easy to hit as someone wavedashing; however, it doesn't have much to defend itself with and has less armor to accommodate for the increased mobility. The Light Bowgun, on the other hand, is the only Gunner weapon capable of Rapid Fire, and has a modified Unnecessary Combat Roll that's slightly longer and faster than the default. However, since it's wearing the same Gunner armor as the Bow and doesn't have a shield bolted to the gun like its' bulkier cousin, it'll crumple pretty quickly if you don't position yourself to fire correctly. Later games toned this up even further with the two weapons, with the Bow gaining the Tactical Retreat art in Generations Ultimate to keep a safe distance from the monster at all times, while the Light Bowgun gained the Bullet Geyser art to get it out of a jam and the Fanning Maneuver Silkbind Attack in Rise to pivot towards monsters' weak points.
  • Bird Wyverns such as the Great Jaggi or Yian Kut-ku move very fast and unpredictably, but have thin hides and don't take much to kill.
  • Monster Hunter Generations:
    • Prowlers. Three times the faints of a Hunter, as well as speedy attack strings and unlimited stamina for running, but about as sturdy as you'd expect a realistically proportioned anthropomorphic cat to be.
    • Mizutsune is a slender, lithe Leviathan that excels at performing twisting leaps and jumps, and its mobility on land is top-class as well thanks to the slippery soap that its body produces. However, out of the Fated Four, it's got the least health and the only part of its body hard enough to deflect weapons are its claws. Not the case for its Soulseer deviant, which has the health pool and power to back it up.
• In New Horizons, all ships of tier 8 and 7. Only lightly armed, will sink just by being looked at funny, and have small cargo holds. They are also the fastest ships in the game, and thus make perfect smugglers. Pirates in particular almost exclusively use them in groups, and can win battles just by overwhelming lone ships with their numbers.
• One Way Heroics has the Adventurer and Hunter classes, who can move faster than normal when they use the Dash skill, but have poor HP and vitality stats. The Adventurer can also use the Jump skill to skip two tiles ahead, making them even more mobile.
• Repede in Tales of Vesperia. His defense and HP are somewhat lower then some other members of the party, but has an ability that increases his movement speed in battle, and other abilities that activate when he makes use of Free Run, which make him excellent for Hit-and-Run Tactics. He can still hold his own in a head-on fight in the hands of a skilled player, though.
• Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE has Eleonora Yumizuru. She can deal a lot of damage with physical attacks due to her good Strength and critical hit rate, but she has the worst HP, defense, and resistance in the game. She can only survive in a fight because she has good evasion and some skills that reduce her chance of being targeted.

Beat 'em Up

• Alien vs. Predator: Lt. Linn Kurosawa. In this game she is frail, has weak power, and is a sitting duck when reloading her pistol (the other characters can move while their guns cool down), but compensates by having the highest speed and has the largest move set out of the four characters.
• Battle Circuit has Yellow Iris categorized as a Speedy. Her speed is the fastest and so are her hits, but she is also the one with the second least amount health (Pink Ostrich beats her in that department).
• Cadillacs and Dinosaurs: Hannah, the party's Action Girl, is the fastest with knives, and has the best dash, yet she can't take that many hits.
• Guy in Final Fight. Lacking the powerhouse strength of Haggar, nor the average power of Cody, Guy is the fastest. He can't take too many hits as even a simple mook can whittle his health bar easily to nothing.
• The King of Dragons: The Elf. Given the range of his arrows, vastly superior to other characters' attacks, he is in fact one of the easier character to win the game with. He cannot take that many hits though.
• Knights of the Round: Lancelot. Even when he is fully leveled up, the knight still has the lowest health out of the trio, yet is still speedier than everyone else.
• MORDHAU: Eschewing armor entirely will let you move around very, very fast, even if you don't attack any faster than the rest. The extra footwork you can put in is extremely handy, but you will need it because most of the weapons will kill you in one hit if they catch you unarmored, especially the sharp ones.
• Ninja Baseball Bat Man: Twin Bats Ryno, he can hop from place to place all over the screen. Fast grabs, quick down attacks, and fast desperation attacks. With Ryno being the smallest of the four, his frame is the most sensitive to enemy attacks.
• The Sengoku Basara series has characters like Uesugi Kenshin, Fuuma Kotaro and Ishida Mitsunari. All of them have very high movement speed and attack speed and are good at stun-locking opponents (and in Kotaro's case the ability to combo infinitely in the air), but below-average attack, defense and HP values and end up in trouble if their opponents get on the offensive.
  • Kotaro's cameo in the anime also showcases this: He spends most of his fight with Takeda Shingen Flash Stepping around the arena and wearing down Shingen's block, until a single well-placed punch sends him flying.
• Kurenai from Sengoku (SNK) 3. She has fast attacks, speed, the most combo potential, but is the weakest.
• In the Streets of Rage series, Blaze's health and attack strength are weak, but she moves quicker than Adam or Axel, and she could throw enemies further than either of the two. Skate became the speedster in 2 & 3. Similar to Blaze, he has fast speed and attacks, but has weak strength and stamina. And unique to the second game, he is the only one who could run across the screen. In the third game, everyone had a dash, but Skate's was still the quickest. Cherry (Adam's daughter and Skate's niece) takes up the role in 4, having relatively weak attacks and below-average health but high movement speed and comboing potential.
• Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time has the lowest health of any character, but moves the fastest and has the strongest dash attacks.
• April O'Neil becomes playable in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, and is a speedy, combo-oriented character with relatively low durability and per-hit damage.
• Transformers: Devastation has two of them, Bumblebee and Sideswipe. Bumblebee is the most agile of the characters, having a combo reset as his special ability, but is relatively frail. Sideswipe totes high speed to compensate for his low defense stat, yet he's still stronger than Bumblebee and faster than Optimus, Wheejack, and Grimlock. In addition, Sidewipe has a unique skill that allows him to reach his target almost instantly, where his close combat skills can do their work.
• Undercover Cops: Rosa Felmond. Her attack and defense is weak, and she gets knocked down easily, but makes up for it with nimble speed, fast punches, speedy grabs, and can do two different grapples that can throw enemies far.
• Kyle from Violent Storm. His defense is low and his attacks are very weak, but he has lighting quick attacks, fast grabs, and can dash the fastest out of the trio.

Fighting Games

• In Art of Fighting 2, Yuri Sakazaki was arguably the fastest character in the game with good power, however she can be easily defeated.
• BlazBlue:
  • Taokaka is the fastest character in the game (save Fu Rin Ka Zan Bang), and she specializes at dashing at high speeds with a slash attack, but she has the lowest health next to Carl and Amane.
  • Likewise, in Blazblue Cross Tag Battle, Yosuke Hanamura and Blake Belladonna have the lowest HP pools in the game (besides Yukiko Amagi and Nu-13, who are both more Squishy Wizard) but they have the fastest run speeds in the game; Yosuke is the faster of the two but Blake has the advantage of more reach and mix-ups from her Shadow Semblance.
• In Brawlhalla, Thea is the first Legend with a natural Speed stat of 9 (out of 10), allowing her to zip around the battlefield faster than any other character. To compensate for this, her natural Defense stat is a lowly 3, which means she gets knocked around a lot as well.
• Kaede in Duel Savior Destiny is extremely fast, good at cancels and very easy to combo with, but even when blocking she tends to take quite a bit of damage.
• Millia Rage from Guilty Gear. She's fast, can mix up her opponents and dash all around the stage, but her health and defensive options are weak. Chipp Zanuff is even more mobile, has fast attacks, and a triple jump and can wall cling, but his health pool is so notoriously tiny even the devs meme on it.
• Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes introduces
  • Fan-favorite Strider Hiryu, who can jump on walls and teleport at the cost of low health.
  • Red Venom, a special version of Venom that moves much faster than the other characters but takes more damage.
• Ninja Girl Ibuki in Street Fighter is very fast and can extend her damage with unique techniques but she has low health.
• The Super Smash Bros. series use "weight" as a factor when determining who is KO'd. Essentially the lower the weight of the character the further, earlier, they are knocked back compared to heavier characters:
  • Zero Suit Samus is very agile, especially in the Wii U/3DS game which gave her great recovery, but she's very light.
  • Sonic is the fastest character in all the games he appears in, but making full use of that speed is the only way to win with him. Even after Wii U/3DS improved his KO power, most of his strongest attacks are rather slow, and he can be KOed at very low percentages, which necessitates a hit-and-run strategy.
  • Meta Knight in Brawl, is very fast in both movement and attack and his multiple jumps and special attacks give him some good edgeguarding ability, excellent recovery, and good KO moves. However, he's also a lightweight and able to be KOed or knocked into an irrecoverable position easily, not to mention that most of his attacks are meant to rack up damage with multiple weak hits.
  • Sheik has excellent mobility across the board and is also very fast in moveset, but she's one of the lightest characters in most of the games, especially in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Her damage out of combos is also very impressive though her kill power can be lacking in some entries. Due to her light weight the beetle item scoops her up faster than even Zelda.
• Fei-Yen, the fastest virtuaroid and a Genki Girl in Virtual-ON, has very fragile armor and weak attack until she activates her panic mode.

First Person Shooters

• In the original Aliens versus Predator (1999) game, the Alien's main advantages were being way faster than the other two races (Marine and Predator), as well as being able to climb walls and walk on ceilings. This was balanced out by the Alien having by far the fewest Hit Points, as well as being unable to wear any damage reducing armor like the Marine and having no ranged weapons, unlike the other two races. (although it's sheer speed helped mitigate this). The Marine was basically the opposite (fairly slow and clumsy, but with really good weapons), which the Predator was basically the opposite (being even slower than the Marine, but with a ton of hit points and weapons that are a lot better than the Aliens, if inferior to those of the Marine.)
  • Aliens vs. Predator 2 features the Runner alien, which is essentially the same as an always crouching drone, except it moves faster and is not able to sustain as much damage.
• The Velociraptor fills this role in Dino D-Day. It's very quick and can kill any enemy with a pounce, but it can be killed with just a few shots.
• A general rule in Dirty Bomb is that the lower a mercenary's health is, the faster they go and vice versa. Standouts include Aura, Sparks, Proxy, Kira, and Aimee.
• Evolve has the Wraith. It has the lowest health and armor of all the monsters. On the other hand, its warp ability allows it excellent horizontal and vertical mobility. On top of that, its Warp Blast can act as an extra warp in emergencies. These factors, combined with its smaller hitbox, make it excellent at hit and run tactics and horrible at direct fights.
• Exaggerated in In Pursuit of Greed with Xith, the Zollessian reptilian hunter. He's the fastest among the player characters, with all his stats at 100/100... except strength, which is a miserable 20/100!
• The Hunter infected in Left 4 Dead have insane parkour skills allowing them to move in a blur and strike like a bolt of bad-smelling lightning. Unfortunately, they still get sent ragdolling with a single well-aimed shotgun blast.
• Overwatch has the game's mascot, Tracer, who fulfils this trope among its lineup. She is extremely powerful at short range, has above average movement speed, and her lack of effectiveness at longer ranges is made up for through a Flash Step ability. However, she has the lowest health in the game at just 150 hit points, and so must use ambush tactics and her superior mobility to stay alive.
• Flank champions in Paladins are the fastest and mobile of the four classes and can do a lot of damage up close, but have the lowest health of all the champions and have pitiful range. The exception is Buck, who is a Lightning Bruiser with more health than most champions except Front Line champs.
• The point of a dodge build in PAYDAY 2. With the right skill build, a heister can move like greased lightning and most enemy shots will just whiz harmlessly by. However, many of those skills also require a high Concealment, which is often negatively correlated with armor and weapon strength. In other words, you'll have to stick to light or even no armor and weaker weapons. Good luck killing Heavily Armored Mooks, and God forbid you actually take a hit or two, especially on higher difficulties. It's definitely not for newbies.
• Planetside:
  • The Vanu Magrider is the lightest of the three main tanks and the weakest in an open fight, but being a Hover Tank lets it cross any terrain, it's amphibious, and it's the only tank that can strafe.
  • In 2 the ESFs became this and Difficult, but Awesome due to the prevalence of flak and G 2 A missiles.
  • Infantry with the Agile armour option get faster running than those with Reinforced armour, but less armour points and less inventory space.
  • When they were first introduced, Titans played like this despite being the durable ships in the game on paper. The problem was that Titans are so big that it's almost impossible for ships to miss them, and although durable on paper, they could not withstand the combined fire of a fleet for very long. However Titans also couldn't be warp scrambled and could just leave whenever they wanted. Hence Titan Pilots used to just warp in, deploy their doomsday, and immediately warp out. To rectify this all of the Titans' stats were re-balanced to turn it into the Mighty Glacier and prevented Titans from warping until ten minutes after they doomsday.
• Primal Carnage:
  • The Oviraptor has the least amount of health of all the playable dinosaurs, but it's the fastest on land and its pounce attack is stronger than the Novaraptor's, allowing it to quickly leap in, dispatch a human, and flee before it can be hit by more than a few glancing bullets.
  • The pterosaurs, being able to fly, have unmatched speed and mobility, but they are not durable, are clearly visible in the sky, and have to rely on Hit-and-Run Tactics in order to kill humans, and must use their own speed and agility to dodge bullets.
• In Star Wars: Battlefront II, on space maps, each faction has an Interceptor-type fighter that is much faster than the normal fighters, the bombers, or the shuttles but dies with a single missile hit. On the ground there are STAPs and speeder bikes, and the Republic and Imperial special jet pack troops combine this with Glass Cannon.
• Star Wars Battlefront (2015):
  • Luke Skywalker takes hits less reliably than Vader and can't block for as long, but he has the highest running speed of the Heroes, a very maneuverable jump and a dash attack that can let send him flying through enemy hoards.
  • Bossk is even faster than Luke, which can be even further enhanced when using his X-Ray vision ability. This comes at the cost of being rather lackluster defense, but since his trait lets him heal for every enemy he kills, he can compensate for it.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • The Scout class is a potent hit-and-run fighter; good scouts can wreck an enemy team, taking out key targets like medics. But scouts die. They die and they die: every other class in the game can kill scouts efficiently. Sometimes the only way to survive even seconds is to exercise some good ol' fast-movin' Confusion Fu.
  • The Soldier has a weapon called the Escape Plan, which increases his speed inversely compared to how much health he has. It also causes him to take 35% more damage while it's out and it greatly decreases healing rate from Medics, meaning that its use is limited to, well, escaping.
  • The Engineer's Combat Mini-Sentry (available with the Gunslinger equipped) manages to be one without actually moving. It has less health and firepower than normal sentries and cannot be upgraded, but is very cheap to build, deploys in mere seconds, aims and shoots very quickly, and has a tiny hitbox which lets it avoid a lot of damage.
  • The Spy is generally a Glass Cannon with little in the way of mobility options, but the Big Earner is a weapon that changes that. Equipping the knife reduces his starting health and makes him even more fragile than he usually is, but the tradeoff is that if he gets a successful Back Stab, he regains Invisibility Cloak and a massive burst of speed, which he can string into multiple kills or convert into a safe retreat.
• TimeSplitters: From the second game onward there are a couple of basic stat distributions for it's characters. The Monkey is the fastest and frailest, having 20 out of 20 for agility and 4 out of 20 for stamina.
• The Stryder titan from Titanfall has the least health out of the three titans. To compensate, it has the highest move speed and can gain unlimited dashes.
• Titanfall 2 brings Northstar and Ronin, both based off of the Stryder chassis from the first game.
• The Manta from Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament III is very fast and a great choice for Car Fu against enemies on foot. On the downside, it has the lowest HP of any vehicle, gets taken out by a single anti-vehicle rocket, and is easily knocked around.

Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games

• Ace Online has 4 playable classes, known as Gears or Air-Frames. The I-gear (or The Fighter) have powerful Jet-series engines that let them have extremely fast boosted top speeds; unfortunately, much of this speed comes at the price of precious armor and shields. Special mention must also be made of their unique skill Overbooster, which makes them shoot forth at 600m/s for a few seconds, faster than any other gear. Also, their agility can be built to be so high that with the right buffs, their evade is well over 100%, and almost nothing that is a missile can hit them.
• Battlestar Galactica Online: Strikes can run rings around the other two classes of starships and outrun them easily in a straight chase, but deal little damage and die in a handful of hits if a Line manages to hit them. Interceptor-types within their classes have the least HP and the most mobility while having the least number of weapon mounts, at least until you get to Lines whose Interceptors have the most mounts, even exceeding the Assaults.
• EVE Online:
  • Frigates and especially interceptors use their speed as the primary form of defense against larger ships: larger ships have massive cannons, but the guns are so big they can't track small, fast-moving opponents. Most larger ships will therefore rely on smaller ships to offer "point" defense. That being said, if one of those massive cannons is able to hit a frigate or interceptor, they'll only need one hit.
  • When they were first introduced, Titans played like this despite being the durable ships in the game on paper. The problem was that Titans are so big that it's almost impossible for ships to miss them, and although durable on paper, they could not withstand the combined fire of a fleet for very long. However Titans also couldn't be warp scrambled and could just leave whenever they wanted. Hence Titan Pilots used to just warp in, deploy their doomsday, and immediately warp out. To rectify this all of the Titans' stats were re-balanced to turn it into the Mighty Glacier and prevented Titans from warping until ten minutes after they doomsday.
• Guild Wars 2: Thieves are often forced into combat-heavy situations with less-than-adequate defense, and very few defensive skills at their disposal. Instead, they rely on an awful lot of dodge-rolling, turning invisible, Shadow Stepping, crippling their enemy while using speed boosts, and just generally being a pain in the ass. With some builds that emphasize offense in addition to their ability to Back Stab for massive damage, they often straddle the line between this trope and Glass Cannon territory.
• Kingdom of Loathing: Moxie-aligned classes. All four (Disco Bandit, Accordion Thief, Avatar of Sneaky Pete, and Snake Oiler) have Moxie as their dominant stat, meaning they'll almost always go first in initiative and have a much higher dodge rate than their fellow classes. In turn, they suffer in terms of both durability and damage output — low Muscle means they have poor health and damage reduction, and low Mysticality means not a lot of Mana to fuel their combat skills.
• Pirates of the Caribbean Online: Sloop-class are faster than anything else, but also have the lowest health and hull defense of all player-controlled ships.
• Vindictus character Lann is a fast dual-wielder with almost no armor, who relies on his dodge skill to avoid attacks; starting out well into the Glass Cannon end of the spectrum, and easily the most fragile character at low levels. He can develop the ability to wear heavier armor at higher levels; but his low HP and defense keep him a Fragile Speedster, although still more resilient than the mage Evie. With the right skill build, he can become a Lightning Bruiser at very high levels.
• World of Warcraft: Between Double Jump, Glide, Fel Rush, and Vengeful Retreat, Hunters have easily the most mobility in the game. However, they wear leather armor and have almost no natural avoidance, relying almost entirely on healing themselves by consuming the souls of enemies they kill. A common saying among players is "A demon hunter dies the moment they stop moving."

Platform Games

• Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance: Maxim is faster than Juste, but has much less defense, and uses speed-based attacks.
• Godzilla: Monster of Monsters!: Mothra can fly above obstacles and can transverse the map more quickly as she can move twice as many spaces as Godzilla can. Balancing this, it doesn't take much more than a gust of wind to kill her, contrasting Godzilla who tanks damage and has the all-powerful atomic breath.
• A Hat in Time: The Hat Kid only has four HP and needs to rely on skills and stealth to collect her Time Pieces back. The player can take this trope to the extreme by making her wear the Sprint Hat, which makes her quicker, but prevents her from double jump, and / or the One-Hit Hero Badge, which reduces her health to a single HP.
• Little Samson: K.O. the mouse is the fastest character in the game and also the best climber. But he has the smallest health bar, dying in one or two hits without upgrades.
• Mega Man:
  • Mega Man 2: Quick Man certainly lives up to his name, but happens to be one of the robot masters that takes double damage from the Mega-Buster (for reference, Metal Man, the guy mocked for being weak to it, takes half the damage Quick Man does), and is weak to two separate weapons (the Crash Bombs and Time Stopper) instead of the usual one.
  • Mega Man 7: Slash Man is small and speedy, but has two weaknesses (Freeze Cracker and Scorch Wheel/Burning Wheel).
  • Mega Man X: Zero attacks a lot faster than X, due to his Z-Saber having superior speed to X's X-Buster, as well as Zero's mobility in his Double Jump. However, Zero attacks at a much closer range, and is incompatable with X's armor sets. As a result, Zero is much more fragile than X.
• Mirror's Edge: Faith can't take too much in the way of subautomatic fire. Good thing she can cross a hallway, shimmy up the wall, and scoot down an airvent in the time it takes some of the enemies to turn and get a bead on her.
• N: The ninja. Fast enough to outrun missiles on a straightaway, but a One-Hit-Point Wonder that can be killed by anything.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • While he doesn't have any powerup, Mario is this by default in 2D games: he remains fast and agile enough to explore the levels and dodge enemies' attacks, but a single hit makes him lose a life.
  • New Super Mario Bros.: The Mini Mushroom powerup takes this trope to its logical extreme: you can run faster and jump higher, but you also become a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
• Donkey Kong '94: Mario is faster, more nimble and resists falls better than he did in the original iteration, but still defenseless against enemies without a hammer to hit them or without any barrel or key to throw on them, and because this game doesn't have any powerups, touching these enemies or failing to dodge one of their projectiles steals him a life.
• Super Meat Boy: Meat Boy is the fastest character in his own game and the most precise in his movement, but he also dies in one hit.
• 20XX: Oxjack's set makes you into one, compared to the other three sets (although you can load up on as many bonus health points as you can get with any of them). Tanky Armatort, power-focused Owlhawk and straight-up blaster Dracopent all have at least something that lets them restore health or improve efficiency on normal health recovery, while all Oxjack gets is a shield that comes online while dashing — but Oxjack's arm improves attack charge time, the head improves dash speed, and the legs permit air-dashing, with the Set Bonus allowing three air-dashes per jump.

Puzzle Games

• The "paper" form of your ball in Ballance fits this trope: it is very fast and light (sometimes too much — it can accidentally fly off rails), and can use the fans to propel itself upwards, but it cannot push anything out of its way or be used to operate buttons, levers etc.
• Princess Leia is portrayed as this in Star Wars Chess. In her battles winning and losing she has to hit her enemies multiple times. In fact when she is losing a common factor is that she will initially outmaneuver and even hit her opponent multiple times before they make contact with her once◊ and she is dead.
• In A Virus Named TOM, the player character can dodge those drones with extreme ease but if he's unlucky enough to get hit by one, he respawns in a corner and loses a whopping 100 energy.

Racing Games

• Speed class cars in Burnout Paradise:
  • The Krieger Racing WTR. The Champ Car lookalike, the last car that you unlock in the game through the "find it in Paradise City and run it into the wall" method, is easily the fastest car in the game, but if you're stupid enough to use it in a Marked Man or Road Rage event, it'll take exactly two wrecks before you lose. Compare that to the Mighty Glaciers, like the Carson Inferno Van, that can take up to a dozen hits before losing, but are slow as hell.
  • The Carson Extreme Hot Rod is very prone to crashes and getting VERY few drive-offs (where you crash, but aren't totaled and drive away) due to its front wheels being completely exposed, and if you lose a wheel, it's an automatic totaling crash. When you're using the Boost, you'd better not even nudge a car, otherwise you wind up Going Airborne with little pieces of your car flying everywhere, including your wheels. Doesn't help that the car introduces Locked Boost, and the ridiculous speeds let you fly across a whole expressway bridge in one jump, something that other cars can't do with 3 jumps. If you keep the speed, it also gains enough momentum to take down even the sturdiest cars in the game.
• The Carmageddon games feature Project X - a three-treaded tank that is extremely speedy and surprisingly weighty, but will crumple like wet paper from one good hit by an opponent. Its atrocious traction also makes it one of the most difficult vehicles to use effectively, even in a straightforward race.
  • Vlad counts too; he drives top fuel dragster-style cars... in a series where the main focus is heavy built-for-carnage vehicles smashing into each other with reckless abandon. Between that and having an always-active Hot Rod (speed at the cost of control) powerup, he tends to get wrecked pretty quickly. Vlad himself somehow always survives, though, as he's the only character besides Max Damage who has appeared in every game in the series.
• Crash Team Racing (Nitro-Fueled) acceleration based characters ^note Coco, N. Gin and Pinstripe in the original are a strange example of this crossed with Jack of All Stats: because they have the best acceleration in the game, they are almost unbeatable in races. Also, because of a problem of balance, they actually have the second-to-best (the third in Nitro-Fueled) top speed in the game. They also have a bad traction, which actually is a strong advantage in this game who relies on drifting and turbo boosts, making them a good introduction to the most advanced class in the game.
• In F-Zero, the equivalents to a speed stat actually are acceleration and turbos, top speed being more comparable to a power stat (even if weight actually is practical to bump lighter vehicles). Starting from F-Zero X, you can vary the acceleration and the top speed of your vehicle, making it this trope if you focus on the former, a Glass Cannon if you focus on the latter, or a combination between these two.
  • While his vehicle was a joke in the original game, Dr. Stewart's Golden Fox entered in this category in F-Zero X. It starts fast and has a great turbo, but it's also one of the hardest vehicles to control and too many shocks with heavier cars can destroy it.
  • In the same game, the Red Gazelle definitely qualifies. Incredibly fast (and more controllable than the former example), but... you might want to do your best to stay away from anyone who might be feeling aggressive.
  • Twin Noritta is by far the lightest vehicle in the series at just 780 kg. It accelerates like no one's business, but it can be put down by even a glancing hit. If it ends up in the middle of a pack of other racers, it is in for a world of hurt.
• In Jak X: Combat Racing, about half the available cars are built for speed over durability, but the ones that most exemplify the Fragile Speedster approach to combat racing are the Mayfly Firebat and the Havoc A4 V12. While going really fast in a racing game would usually be a good thing, there are plenty of weapons dotted around the tracks and you can be killed by brushing against a wall, meaning that a high velocity often only serves to put you in front of someone's machine guns.
• Mario Kart lightweight characters follow a similar vein to F-Zero example above: they can accelerate quickly, are excellent off-road and usually have a smooth traction, but their low top speed forces them rely on mini-turbos to catch up on long term and they are really easily knocked around by the heavier classes. If the player slows down for even a second (Red/Spiny Shells, anyone?), expect someone from behind to drive into them, sending them careening off a ledge.
  • Super Mario Kart actually has two examples in this category:
    • Peach and Yoshi are a mix of this and Jack of All Stats: they have the best acceleration in the game, but average top speed and weight. Unlike following games, they also have a bad traction; however, this disadvantage also makes them good training characters for heavyweights.
    • On the other hand, Koopa and Toad are the Crutch Characters of this game: their second-to-best acceleration in the game and good traction makes them perfect for newcomers, but their lightweight and low top speed makes them hard to catch up on higher levels.
  • Mario Kart 64 lightweights are an exception: with their traditional acceleration, Peach, Toad and Yoshi also have the best top speed and the strongest mini-turbos in the game. However, they have the most imprecise controls (which is a strong handicap in battle mode) and heavier karts easily push them to the side. Outside of battle mode, this trope can be downplayed by their off-road which gives them a good recovery (avoiding them from becoming Glass Cannons) and the fact that handling doesn't really matter in races where you have to drift constantly.
  • Mario Kart: Super Circuit follows a similar vein to the previous game: every single character actually can reach the maximum top speed, but the lightweights can reach it faster thanks to their acceleration, which also makes them unstoppable on environments like Shy Guy Beach where you have to race on water. Unlike the previous installment, they also benefit a good traction, making them as good for starters and veterans because of the inward drift mechanic. The developers seemed to be conscious of it, considering it is harder to win the best rank on Grand Prix when controlling these characters.
  • Mario Kart DS has the most diverse examples in this category:
    • Regarding characters, Peach, Yoshi, Toad and Dry Bones are the Mario Kart definition: they share a strong acceleration and handling at the cost of a light weight and low to average top speed.
    • Regarding vehicles, skill karts combine the series definition with a traditional one compared to the others: they are lighter and hold less items, but reach higher top speeds, gain better boosts and are more controllable.
    • Luigi's skill kart, the Poltergust 4000, could have its place in Mario Kart 64, considering it combines great acceleration, handling and top speed with a low drift stat to abuse snaking and a lightweight to cross offroad like no one's business.
    • Other skill vehicles follow Mario Kart's "quick to start, hard to catch up" definition: Yoshi's skill kart, the Egg 1, has less top speed than the above and is the lightest, but benefits a better acceleration and handling. Dry Bones' skill kart, the Dry Bomber, despite its less light weight and worse top speed, is the most extreme example because of its maximum acceleration and handling stats.
  • Mario Kart Wii has one half of a category for starters players which heavier counterparts enter in the Stone Wall article, and the lighter part of a category for intermediate players which balances lightweight stats and advanced ones.
    • The lighter starter vehicles^Examplesthe lightweight kart Booster Seat, its bike counterpart Bit Bike and the middlewight bikes Sugarscoot and Zip Zip are the easiest to control and they have the second-to-best acceleration, off-road and mini-turbo of their vehicle categories. The counterparts are their second lightest weight and subpar drift, but also the worst top speed for any vehicle^{Special cases}Sugarscoot actually has the best acceleration of middle-sized bikes, the lightest weight and the third off-road, but fits the other criteria nonetheless. On the other hand, the middleweight bike Zip Zip is a special case, the only equivalent being the heavyweight Phantom: it has the second lightest weight, and subpar drift and top speed among middleweight bikes, but also the second-to-best acceleration and handling, the third mini-turbo and the best off-road of its weight category.
    • The lighter skill vehicles^Examplesthe lightweight kart Cheep Charger and its bike counterpart Quacker have the best acceleration of their classes, the second-to-best drift, handling, and a good mini-turbo. Quacker also has inside drift, allowing it to take the sharpest turns with more control than any bike in the game. However, their top speed is not very impressive, they are the lightest vehicles of their league^note Quacker actually is the lightest vehicle in the whole game, and while their off-road is not terrible, it's only above average.
  • Mario Kart 7 has a point system for karts bodies, tires and gliders: characters from feather to middleweights with the combinations exposed below will fall into this trope while the large will be more balanced. These combo all give the best air top speed.
    • Concerning characters, the game distinguishes feather (Toad, Koopa, Shy Guy and Lakitu) and light characters (Peach, Yoshi and Daisy): both have the best handling and top speed underwater and while the latter have a better weight and land top speed than the former, they are worse everywhere else. They also are the same size as middleweights, making them more vulnerable.
    • Regarding kart bodies, Birthday Girl, Bumble V and Egg 1 have the best acceleration while Cloud 9 and Pipe Frame are close second, but are the lightest. Bumble V's mini-turbo is also the most powerful while others' are only average and is faster than others on land (even if only above average), but is the least controllable on land. On the other hand, Birthday Girl and Cloud 9 are extremely precise but the slowest while Egg 1 and Pipe Frame are average in these two areas. Their off-road, however, is variable: Bumble V and Pipe Frame are excellent in this area while Cloud 9 and Egg 1 are average and Birthday Girl is mediocre.
    • Roller, Sponge and Wood tires amplify this trope for these vehicles in varying ways (though all of them give a great acceleration and the best air top speed): the first gives the best acceleration, handling, mini-turbo and stability, but no weight, land top speed or drift, and average off-road; Sponge also gives a good acceleration, an incredible drift, a decent off-road and an average stability, but a moderate handling, a lightweight and a small land top speed; Wood tires give a ludicrous drift, stability and good handling and off-road, but a lightweight (but not as light as others), a bad land top speed and no mini-turbo.
  • Mario Kart 8 (Deluxe) follows the previous title in drivers specialities and vehicles customization. Heavyweights become more balanced inside while other categories become this trope. The following examples only concern the remake:
    • Lightweight characters are divided into six subcategories and some female middleweights^note Cat Peach, Female Villager and Inkling Girl actually are closer to this trope.
    • The Fragile Speedsters of this game are the silly-looking Biddybuggy and Mr Scooty: they give little-to-no top speed, no weight and average traction, but a ludicrous acceleration and mini-turbo coupled with a smooth handling. Roller tires enforce every single aspect of the vehicle along with Cloud, Parachute, Flower and Paper Glider.
    • Landship and Streetle give slightly less acceleration, handling and mini-turbo than the vehicles above, but slightly better top speed and traction. Button and Leaf tires reduces the traction, but enforces the mini-turbo.
    • Pipe Frame, Varmint and City Tripper are slightly less light and more controllable, but also less stable.
    • Standard Bike, Flame Rider, Wild Wiggler and W 25 Sliver Arrow have less acceleration and mini-turbo, but more top speed and traction.
    • Cat Cruiser, Comet, Yoshi Bike and Teddy Buggy are a bit heavier but less stable. Sponge and Cushion tires make them more stable and preserve their acceleration, but make them weaker everywhere else^note The latter is especially problematic, considering it makes the hitbox bigger.
• In Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, characters with high top speed and high handling (eight or nine for the former and one or two for the weight stat, which is opposed to the latter) are nearly unstoppable, but they must avoid heavier characters at all costs if they don't want to be bumped off-road and take an eternity to reach their full power again.

Real Time Strategy games

• BattleZone II: Combat Commander's ISDF "Jackal" Mortar Bike is an extremely fragile, extremely fast Hover Tank that sits as far away as possible while shelling the enemy with mortars. Prior to the unofficial 1.3 update, it was so fast that it broke the game's netcode.
• Command & Conquer:
  • The NOD faction's primary shtick is speed. They may not endure too much punishment, but damn, they're fast. Fast and up to their ears in cloaking technology, enabling them to ideally strike from virtually every angle.
  • Red Alert has the Allied Nations for the Red Alert 1 and 2, though the second game splits this trait with the Empire of the Rising Sun. They're faster than their competition (consisting of the Soviets and their allies) but have less HP. For instance, the Allied Mirage Tank is fast and reasonably well armed, but has low HP and goes down in a few hits. Meanwhile, the Rising Sun's Mecha-Tengu is lightning quick but lightly armored and armed — they will get exactly one pass over any target with Anti-Air ability before they're taken down.
  • Command and Conquer: Generals has the GLA units unable to stand in a straight fight against China or the US, but built for hit and run attacks until they can be upgraded.
• In Company of Heroes, this is the domain of all light vehicles, which encompass jeeps, half-tracks and the like. MG fire will punch through their armour and most anti-tank weapons will one-shot them, but they can easily move outside their firing arcs and flank them. The British using the Commando Support doctrine can also call in a Tetrarch, a light tank, which comes crashing in on a glider. It's capable of zipping around the map quickly and it's still more than a match for infantry and light vehicles, but it's very vulnerable to even smaller anti-tank guns, and heavier guns like the Flak 88 will one-shot it. The Russian T-70 in 2 is similar, being fast with decent firepower, but it's even less armoured than the Tetrarch.
• The Ordos Raiders of Dune II. Faster than regular Trikes at the cost of armor, making them the fastest and frailest vehicle in the game.
• Dungeon Keeper 2: Imp Worker Units only have a few Hit Points, a Scratch Damage attack, Super-Speed, and a Teleport ability. They're unmatched at quickly tending to jobs in your underground lair, but flee from almost any fight.
• EndWar:
  • The European Federation Enforcer Corps operates on this philosophy. In this post-oil future world, Europe is a pioneer of hydrogen engine technology and this gives them a considerable mobility advantage over their American and Russian counterparts, who still use old petroleum engines (America has the funds and reserves to keep it going, and Russia owns most of the remaining oil anyway).
  • Airborne Battalions are strategic examples. They employ gunships and riflemen to swarm the enemy with Death from Above while the cloaked riflemen run behind the enemy lines and grab the vitals uplinks. This denies the enemy their off-map support options and nets you valuable CP for airdropping riflemen in. However the distinct lack of tanks and artillery mean they lack the ability to fight when cornered or crack strong fortified positions. In urban environments they utterly excel, but over open ground they are much less powerful.
• FTL: Faster Than Light features the Nesasio, the A variant of the Stealth Cruiser, which starts with level 4 engines (whereas other cruisers start with level 1 or 2 engines) and an Invisibility Cloak that boosts evasion by a flat 60 percentage points, but no shields, which must be instead bought at a shop for 120 scrap. It also has long-range scanners, which can help you avoid enemies.
• Every Homeworld game starts you up with scout fighters that are ridiculously fast, but start popping like balloons as soon as someone directs an anti-fighter weapon in their general direction. Cataclysm starts out like this, but it doesn't take long for the frail fighters to gain the ability to combine into more powerful (and actually useful) corvettes, and near the end of the game they get upgraded to full Lightning Bruiser status.
• The Adept class in Majesty is extremely quick and has a buff spell to make them even quicker. However, their initial hit points are fairly low (a few steps above Squishy Wizard) and they wear light armor, so while new Adepts might patrol the settlement, don't expect them to win many battles. (In fact, they tend to flee after taking even a tiny amount of damage.)
• The Thief class from Mewgenics has a large bonus to its Speed stat, letting it move farther and earlier, and several movement-related skills, like backflipping away from an incoming attack during an enemy's turn- which are all very useful assets in avoiding damage, as the Thief doesn't have much health to spare.
• Ogame:
  • Cruisers are the fastest warships of the game — only espionage probes are faster — and are excellent against light fighters and missile launchers. However, they go down quickly once one can build Gauss cannons and (especially) Plasma turrets.
  • Espionage probes, by far the fastest unit of the game, have no defenses of any kind and are destroyed easily; all other ships have rapid fire against them.
• The Virus in Pandemic 2. Its fast evolution and high infectivity make it the quickest disease to play, but it's the most fragile and highly susceptible to the environment and drugs.
• Star Control likes this trope. Most of the smallest ships (and generally least expensive, though there are exceptions) can run circles around their larger counterparts, dodging incoming projectiles with impunity and generally falling apart after half a second of actually getting hit.
• StarCraft has a number of these:
  • Terran Vultures are the fastest units in the game and are great at harassment and scouting, but aren't very durable and do little damage against anything that isn't a basic-tier unit or worker. With Spider Mines, they can outmanoeuvre and trap units that would otherwise destroy them in a straight fight. They generally tend to be relegated into a supporting role or used to support Siege Tanks against a Protoss Army; their attack helps kill off light-melee-infantry attacking the artillery and their mines create a nasty trap against an advancing army.
  —"Vulture Hover Bikes...they were fast, light and highly maneuverable and gave their riders about as much protection as a paper hat.""
  • Zerglings are very frail but very fast early game melee units that can be used in a Zerg Rush to go for an early win. They get a bit trickier to use as each side unlocks stronger units.
  • StarCraft II often has the Terran competitive scene using Reapers early on. They're quick, they deal extra damage to structures, and they can leap walls. Since they cost 50 vespene a pop, players have to be careful not to drain their economy too early by replacing fallen reapers because of carelessness. They're not a particularly durable unit, but make for great harassment.
• Corvettes in Stellaris are the smallest class of warship and the one you start with, characterised by their very low hit points and limited options for weapons and armour. However they have a whopping 80% Evasion rate, so even though an individual Corvette isn't very strong, it can last a surprisingly long time against large anti-ship artillery (which will flail around hopelessly trying to swat them out of space) and do decent damage for the low cost to build them. Swarms of Corvettes used to dominate the naval combat meta for several version cycles, at one point it was even totally cost-ineffective to even give them any upgrades as opposed to simply spamming the starting Corvette.
• In Syndicate (2012), according to his infobank entry, Agent Tatsuo's augmentations are focused on speed at the expense of defense and regeneration.
• Total Annihilation, due to averting Homing Boulders, provides some rare RTS examples. The Scouts/Fighter jets don't have much in the way of armor, hp, or attack (the Scout jet has no attack period!), but good luck actually hitting the damn things if they're at top speed.
• Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon:
  • Imperial Torpedo Boats are the most fragile ship in the game, with only 350 HP, however they have a top speed of 40 kilometres per hours, as well as being well armed for a small ship, as they have two torpedo tubes, making them Glass Cannons at the same time.
  • All versions of the Sloop are relatively fast and lightly armoured, with the Procyon Sloop being the fastest, the Pirate Sloop being the best armoured, and the Imperial Warsloop being the worst in both aspects.
  • Gunboats, both the Procyon and Pirate versions, with the Procyon Gunboat being slightly faster at 45 kilometres per hour, compared to the Pirate Gunboat at 43 kilometres per hour, making the Procyon Gunboat the fastest ship in the game. However, they are both very fragile, with the Procyon version only having 510 HP and the Pirate version having 580 HP.
• Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos:
  • The Night Elf Archer is the frailest of all basic units (in the original, they barely had more HP than a Worker Unit). However, they have the ability to catch a ride on a Hippogryph, allowing them to fly off much faster than walking, and dealing the same damage.
  • Most flyers in the game tend to be this, going down very quickly to even a few ranged units.
• WarGames Defcon 1: The jeeps and Tri-bikes are among the fastest units of their respective factions, but they're very, very lightly armed, with their machine-guns capable of doing some puny Scratch Damage while being lightly armored to boot. What makes them invaluable however is that both of them contains flare launchers, which can be used to summon airstrikes — making them invaluable in several missions and must be kept alive at all costs.

Roguelikes

The Buginis breed in Sipho has a cheap movement zooid and a structure zooid that makes it easier to use them more often... but those same structure zooids are also the most fragile of their size.

Shoot 'em Up

• After Burner: Your ship. You can go full throttle and reach incredible speeds, yet one hit from a missile (except in Climax) will cause you to spectacularly blow up.
• Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages: Fighter-archetype ships have poor shields, but excellent engines.

Simulation Games

• Plantasia:
  • Star blossoms (a kind of flower) are the fastest-growing perennials, but the weakest against pests.
  • Crabgrass is a weed that grows and spreads quickly. It can be removed easily.
  • Ants move and eat ridiculously fast, but die quickly when hit with the pest sprayer.
• X:
  • M5 class ships (scouts) go extremely fast but die with a couple blasts from a heavy fighter's cannon or a single shot from a capital ship weapon, and ships made by the Boron move fast but have weak shields. Ships made by the Split are very fast and have pathetic shielding, though they have more firepower.
  • X3 has two racing ships; the slower one is easily twice as fast as the third-fastest ship in the game, and the fastest is really unfeasibly fast — you can easily smack into things if you're not very careful. Both have essentially no shielding, but nothing in the game has a realistic chance of ever managing to land a hit on either ship.
  • Terran Conflict and Albion Prelude have the Teladi Kestrel and it's pirate variant, which are the two fastest armed ships in the game. The latter can only be caught by one type of missile.

Strategy Role Playing Games

• Dragon Quest:
  • Dragon Quest III: Thieves excel in speed, but their other stats tend to be middling. Speed adds to defense, though, so they're surprisingly durable early on. However, their low HP gets to be a liability when spellcasting enemies become the norm, as spells ignore the defense stat entirely.
  • Dragon Quest V:
    • Saber -the Hero's pet Sabrecat- is strong and has excellent speed stats, but he can take few hits.
    • As a party member, Dwight Dwart's only good stat is his agility, which increases by seven each level on average, he loses this at later levels when his other stats start to catch up with him, but that won't be for a while.
  • Erik from Dragon Quest XI is nearly as fragile as Squishy Wizard Veronica, but by the end of the game his speed is so high that he can even act before the infamously speedy (and flee-happy) Metal Slime.
• Klaus von Lichtenheim in Exit Fate has the highest speed stat of all playable characters in the game, often making him capable of taking multiple actions before the enemy even gets one. But since he's in fact a cat, he can't equip armor and has very bad defense.
• Familia:
  • Poki has worse HP growth than his father, but he has the highest speed growth out of all monk characters.
  • Muffins the cat is even faster and more frail than Poki, due to being unable to equip armor.
• The Final Fantasy series:
  • Edge from Final Fantasy IV. Whenever the ninja prince is in your party, he's usually the first to get ready to attack. Quite infamously, he's also usually the first one to die.
  • The Thief and Ninja classes usually wear light armor but with high Dexterity or Speed stats. Character examples include Yuffie (of Final Fantasy VII) and Rikku (of Final Fantasy X). In games such as Final Fantasy V, Ninjas gain the Dual Wield ability which increases their damage dramatically, allowing them to double as Glass Cannons.
  • The Cactuar enemy from Final Fantasy VI. It has only 3 HP, but also some of the highest Evasion in the game. Their King Mook version (the optional boss Gigantuar), however, is a full-on Lightning Bruiser, being one of the hardest opponents in the entire game.
  • The Viera race from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Final Fantasy Tactics A2. They are usually the fastest race and their strength ranges from medium to pretty strong. However, their HP is not so hot so a few strong hits can quickly down a Viera unit.
• Boney and Salsa in Mother 3. Both of them are speedy animals (a dog and a monkey, respectively) with okay attack power (lousy attack power in Salsa's case), poor defenses, and low HP.
• Lie of Caelum:
  • Kyou has low defenses, but can quickly deal multiple hits due to his Speed Discipline. At low HP, he has a higher chance to dodge and counterattack.
  • Aya has the skill discipline and all of her techs deal at least 10 hits, with the second one increasing the party's accuracy. She also has higher base agility than Kyou while dealing less damage and also having low defenses.
  • Vanu has the skill discipline and can easily dodge most attacks, especially if she's at more than 2/3 of her HP, but her HP is very low for a human boss. She can also use a buff that increases her offensive power at the cost of instantly breaking her stance.
• Nocturne: Rebirth has several enemies/familiars that fit this trope, like the cat family. Thanks to the battle formation system, the Speed Star formation ends up turning the entire party into this trope by increasing their speed and giving them a chance at consecutive turns at the cost of defense.
• Nei in Phantasy Star II is stuck wearing a Fibervest by the time you're able to equip Ceramic gear on the rest of your party, but she'll nearly always strike first, which is helpful since she's made for Dual Wielding. Shir doesn't have it quite as badly as Nei, being even speedier and able to equip a Crystcape, or even the Neicape if you decide not to give it to Amy.
• Several Pokémon 'mons are faster with fewer defenses/hit-points:
  • Ninjask has one of the highest speed ratings in the game, plus an ability (Speed Boost) that makes it even faster. Not surprising, it has very low base Defense and HP.
  • The Speed Forme of Deoxys had the highest Speed stat in the game at an incredible 180 prior to Generation VIII ^note it has since been dethroned by Regieleki, and average stats everywhere else. It's mostly used to set up passive damage and Status Effects, and then flee before taking too many hits. Even in Attack Form, it has virtually no Defense and most attacks will KO it in one hit.
  • Accelgor, a ninja slug is ludicrously fast and has decent special attack, but its defenses are very poor.
  • Electric Pokemon tend to fall under this. Electric Pokemon are basically the fastest type in the games (particuarly Electrode and Jolteon, which are in the top five of all Pokemon in terms of speed), but most of them share the same weakness: their base Defense is usually pretty low.
  • Greninja is a rare Water type Fragile Speedster/Glass Cannon, finally taking away Starmie's crown as the fastest Water Pokémon in the game. However, while Starmie has respectable defenses to go with its speed and power, Greninja is on the frail side, and can easily be done in by a well-placed Thunderbolt or Mach Punch. This is especially the case in competitive battling, where it's very popular to equip the amphibian ninja with a Life Orb.
  • Alakazam is one of the most notorious examples in the game. It's incredibly fast and is capable of one-shotting many opponents with its massive Special Attack, but its HP and Defense are ridiculously low. One physical attack and it is likely to go down. Its Special Defense is pretty good, but those low HP kind of offset that.
  • Mienshao is very fast and hits very hard, but has trouble taking a hit. However, it can use U-Turn combined with its ability Regenerator to help offset this by dealing damage and taking it off the field, which heals a big chunk of the damage it took. It can also use Drain Punch to life-drain opponents.
  • Zoroark is very fast and can hit hard with a variety of moves, but doesn't take hits very well.
  • Cryogonal is very fast, but its Defense is bottom-of-the-barrel, and its typing doesn't help.
  • Gengar is very fast and has incredibly high Special Attack, but it's on the frail side.
  • Ribombee is notable for both being swift and able to throw Sticky Web to slow down its further opponents. It also has nice offensive stats and some other decent status moves to cover. Yet the cute little fairy bug won't stand a good physical attack.
  • Whimsicott is another fairy with its speediness taken up to eleven: not only it has a very high speed stat, it has a Prankster ability to throw status effect and block hits before the opponent does the same. Yet it's not on the most powerful side and a good Poison Jab sends him flying.
  • The Ultra Beast Pheromosa has extraordinary Speed — second only to Ninjask and Speed Deoxys — and excellent Attack stats on both the physical and special sides. What's more, its Beast Boost ability further increases its speed with each KO it scores. Its defenses, naturally, are abysmal.
  • Regieleki has respectable Attack and Special Attack and the highest base Speed stat of any Pokémon (200!), which helps it deal as much damage as it can before it's brought down due to its middling HP and poor defensive stats.
  • Out of the Sinnoh lake trio, Azelf is the fastest and hits the hardest (both physically and specially), but it also has by far the worst defenses (the other two, Mesprit and Uxie, have very good defenses).
  • Any Pokémon that learns Shell Smash can doubles their attacking stats and speed while dropping both defenses. Give it a White Herb (to re-raise the defenses) and the Pokémon hits Lightning Bruiser territory.
• Matador in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne has 1,000 HP and at the point of the game where you fight him, it only takes a few rounds of you and your demons consistently hitting him to defeat him. The problem is trying to hit him in the first place, as he has a buff skill, Red Capote, that raises his evasion (along with his accuracy) to maximum, and a missed attack causes the attacker's party to lose two turns instead of one.
• Sinjid: Shadow of the Warrior:
  • Shadow Ninjas and Assassins in the third game are the fastest of the available classes, but have low health.
  • Assailants are very fast, making them hard to hit with any class that's not a Shadow Ninja, but they have poor physical defense. They also count as Glass Cannons because their attacks do damage based on speed, which is their best stat.
  • The Poison Wasp is the fastest enemy faced in the Monster Portal, but isn't very sturdy.
  • The Anti Ninja is the fastest enemy in the game, making him really difficult to hit, but has non-existent defenses. He also falls into the Glass Cannon trope due to his high physical strength.
• Spark in Ultima VII has the third-lowest starting Strength of any character (he is just a kid, after all) but the highest starting Dexterity, making him a nimble and quite deadly ranged fighter once you train him a bit.
• In Undertale, the playable Human Child is this in a Pacifist run: because they can't resume themself to kill, they have to avoid enemies' attacks as fast as possible with only the minimum amount of health and the minimum attack. While the armors they find are better over time, they also encounter stronger monsters over the same time, and while they can attack, their opponents' life must not drop to zero. Playing of Pacifist is particularly problematic against Undyne, Mettaton, Asgore and Photoshop Flowey who refuse to be spared, or even to spare for the first and the two latters.
  • The end of the Genocide route has Sans the skeleton, the hardest boss in the game. This boss's stats are lower than anything else you encounter, at 1 HP, 1 Defense and 1 Attack. However, actually landing a hit on them proves to be almost impossible, and while the attacks they use against you really do inflict only 1 damage apiece, they ignore Mercy Invincibility, meaning that these attacks inflict 1 damage per frame — that's 40 damage per second. They also inflict a poison-like status that ticks down at 1 damage per second. Worse still, these attacks move quickly and move in hard-to-dodge patterns, bringing this trope to its logical extreme.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Capsule Monster Coliseum, Wind-type monsters have high movement ranges but low HP.

Sports Games

• Robots in Mutant League Hockey are faster but less resilient than skeletons or trolls (on teams at or around the same rating, at least). According to the game's manual, the all-robot Turbo Techies consist of the sole exception to this rule, GIL-9000, and a bunch of copies based on his blueprints; their frailty is explained by the use of inferior materials in their construction. The other all-robot team, the Bruiser Bots, are even less durable than the Techies, if only slightly. The robot teams tend to suffer a lot of casualties in games against violent or physical teams, especially troll-heavy ones. They also fare poorly in actual fights because they can't take many hits.
• Mutant League Football: The only robots are found on the all-robot Turbo Techies. Their receivers aren't sturdy enough to break most tackles and can struggle to get out of coverage, and their star running back is hard to bring down but has low HP. This means that, yes, troll-dominated defenses spell trouble for them. They also don't get many kills except on dirty plays. The Techies' defensive line and secondary are pretty tough, though, and they record a lot of tackles and sacks thanks to their speed.
• Mutant Football League, the Spiritual Successor to the above:
  • The Orcs of Hazzard's offense depends entirely on megastar RB Iron Jaw Macgilicutti. He's blisteringly fast, but he's just one man, and the D will get their hands on him eventually. Repeated runs against a hard-hitting defense can easily put Iron Jaw on the sidelines or in a hearse, eliminating the Orcs as a scoring threat to any half-decent D. Thankfully he can throw and catch the ball too.
  • Shreddy Von Hatin of the Full Metal Mayhem is the fastest and most agile RB in the game, but like all demon players his weak Healing Factor makes him injury prone and causes him to recover very little damage between plays. When the Mayhem are played by the AI, Shreddy will often be dead on their first drive — and occasionally, on higher Karnage Levels, the first play.
  • As a species, Criminal Aliens tend to be quite speedy and nimble, but can only eat a hit or two before they croak, while also lacking the strength to consistently tackle. They almost encourage you to exploit their propensity for dying, since they hit everyone around them with quite potent acidic blood upon death. Consequently, the all-alien Galaxy Chaos are spectacular on offense, but give up a lot of points because their speedy defenders can't bring down the ballcarrier.

Third Person Shooters

• The Wing Diver class in the Earth Defense Force series is the quickest and most mobile unit; they're equipped with a jetpack, after all. However, this necessitates that they only carry energy-based weaponry (most of which is powered from the same generator as their jetpack) and wear light armor. Planning your movement and attacks carefully is key, lest you overheat your generator and get left a very fragile sitting duck.
• Transformers: War for Cybertron has Fragile Speedsters in the form of the Scout (car) and Scientist (jet) classes. While the Scouts are the smallest, the Scientists are the fastest, have the greatest mobility due to flying over most obstacles ... and they have the tiniest health bars. Luckily, this also means they're really good at getting away from their opponents.
• Loki from Warframe is not a very durable warframe, but he has higher-than-average sprint speed and abilities that help him in an effective getaway.

Tower Defense

• Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time: Zombie Chickens and Ice Weasels. The former has 1/4 HP (meaning that even a Chain Lightning from a Lightning Reed will kill them) while the latter has 2 HP. They're also the fastest enemies in the game, moving fast AND eating fast.

Turn Based Strategy games

• Air Units in the Advance Wars series are a cross between this and Glass Cannon, since they can't be slowed down by terrain - but anything that can hit them makes them go down fast.
• Destroyers in Atlantic Fleet. Just like their Real Life prototypes, they aren't meant to directly engage heavier enemies, lacking any armor to speak of. However, they're also the fastest ships in the game (depending on the class), with some able to go as fast as 36 knots. When facing larger ships, they can either try to run away (ships have to be at least 25,000 yards away from the nearest enemy in order to be able to flee a battle) or try to get close enough to launch broadside torpedoes, while jinking and using smoke to throw off the enemy's aim. Even a near-miss with a large enough caliber can ruin a destroyer's day.
• In Battle for Wesnoth, there are two kinds of fragile speedster: scouts, and elusive units. Scouts are strategically fast units that excel at capturing and threatening villages with their fast movement, but are not as tough or hard-hitting as main-line infantry. The other kind of fragile speedster, the elusive units, rely heavily on their dodging ability to survive in combat. Their low hitpoints and poor resistances make them especially vulnerable to magical attacks and poison, though on the flipside, they can also race back to villages and heal quickly. This category includes the poison-wielding Orcish Assassin, the skirmishing Fencer and Saurian Skirmisher, the life-draining Ghost, the backstabbing Thief, and the simply irritating Footpad.
• In Battle Isle, the rocket buggies, hitting hard but unable to take much punishment, in the first installment they should be kept behind a line of heavier units, as their range was only two hexes, anything could close the distance in a turn. In the second installment they gained the ability to move after firing, having some chance to reposition into a safe location.
• In Crying Suns, Drones move and attack very quickly but have less health and do less damage per hit than Fighters, Frigates and Cruisers. They trump Frigates and are trumped by Fighters in the game’s Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors system.
• In Devil Survivor 2 Fumi, Joe and Hinako all get very high Agility but aside from that they develop Magic or Strength predominantly, meaning they really can't take a hit.
• In Disgaea, the thief classes can steal equipment much more effectively, induce any status effect, run very far, and even steal ATK, DEF, or any other stat the opponent has what have you, but most of them do terrible damage even with guns and bows, their forte, and typically don't take more than just a couple hits if you're lucky. Thieves can even be a whole 1000 levels higher than a warrior, and the warrior will beat the thief like there's no difference.
  • Masked Heroes don't excel in any stat besides SPD, but can traverse the map like nothing else. They even have an Evility that turns them into a One-Hit-Point Wonder in exchange for even more Movement.
• Fire Emblem:
  • The Thief class has low hit points and low defense. However, he can steal valuable items from enemies, and he'll dodge more shots than he'll take.
  • Less robust Myrmidon-class characters can fall into this trope, as well, with the class itself already leaning towards the speed and skill stats over sheer might or defenses.
  • The Pegasus Knight class also falls into this. They also have low hit points and defense, but stand a good chance of dodging most hits because they're light and fast. They often come equipped with Slim weapons, too, which deal little damage but almost always allow a double hit. (However, Pegasus Knights are very strong against magic, and thus make very effective Mage Killers.)
• The Skaven are this in Mordheim: City of the Damned. Lots of movement points, excellent climbing and jumping skills, and pretty decent in melee due to their high dodge chances. However, they have very low HP, often have to wear light armour or lose their innate mobility advantage, and have low morale to boot - Skaven are cowards and don't react well to heavy casualties. They're not exactly great at range either.
• In Nectaris, the CBX-1 Panther is the fastest land unit in the game. Unfortunately, being motorized infantry doesn't make its attack or defense ratings better than the infantry average, which is rather pathetic. Their most effective use is not in fighting land or air units (though they can do both) but to seize neutral factories before the other side's infantry can capture them.
• Sasha from Rondo of Swords has great movement and terrible defense.
• In general, Real Robot types in Super Robot Wars tend to be these. Unit types like Mobile Suits, Aura Battlers and Valkyries tend to be incredibly agile, accurate and their pilots equipped with abilities and command skills that let them kick ass. However, they tend to be very weak defense-wise, allowing one or two good hits on a poorly upgraded unit to go down.
  • Vilkiss has the highest base mobility of Super Robot Wars V, coupled with it's special ability "Ariel Mode"^note At 130 will, 40% chance to completely evade an enemy attack and Ange having one of the highest evasion stats in the game with a high leveled "Prevail". Unfortunately, one good solid hit and she goes down quite easily.
• Valkyria Chronicles has Scouts, who have by far the longest move range of any unit type but also mediocre health and attack power. That said, they're still rather overpowered in the first game, as in conjunction with defense boosting Orders they can tank quite a lot of gunfire, pick off any unit you need dead with one well placed salvo or grenade, and dash straight to the enemy base for a quick capture and win. In IV they're more in line with what you'd expect, serving a supportive role by picking off isolated enemies, exploiting holes in their defensive lines and dying quickly if caught in all but the lightest of crossfire. They're still very effective though, especially with the new Command ability; essentially this allows them to carry another, slower unit a Scout's full movement range once per turn.
• Vandal Hearts II has perhaps one of the purest examples of this in the form of a unique piece of light armor called L-mach; any character wearing it has their Movement increased by 30 and thus can cross an entire map in one or two turns... but their max health is reduced to ONE.

Vehicular Combat

• Ace Combat game series:
  • The X-29 have incredible acceleration and max speed but take hits poorly. So do its "cousins" the F-5E and F-20A in their respective games. The Cariburn is fast, but since a single missile hit can take the damage meter up to 51% even on Normal, damages easily. It blends with Glass Cannon as it can equip QAAMs.
  • Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy allows players to customize their airplanes. The usual trade-off on equipment is that you trade off defense for speed, mobility, and/or stability. This turns you into a One-Hit-Point Wonder on harder difficulties, but that's a staple of the series anyway.
• Elite Dangerous has the Eagle fighter, and its bigger brother, the Imperial Eagle. Tiny, fast, and nimble, they can dodge target locks all day and stay glued onto just about any opponent's rear aspect while plinking away with their trio of front-mounted weapons. However, they are so weak that even taking two direct missile hits will result in an Eagle-shaped cloud of flaming space debris. Even the starting Sidewinder can survive two missile strikes, if only just barely.
• In the MechWarrior series, Light mechs are very agile, accelerate quickly, and offer very small profiles. They also have very little armor and generally weak weapons. Exaggerated with the Solitaire in Mechwarrior Living Legends, a mech with armor so thin that it can lose an arm from bumping into a tree too hard. On the other hand, it's the fastest ground asset in the entire game and carries a honking huge gun on its shoulder (or more accurately, is its shoulder). Battlearmor in Living Legends is actually quite slow and can only survive a couple shots from most weapons, but make up for it by being the most agile asset in the game - it can sprint around, and jump jet in any direction, allowing a good battlearmor player to jump onto enemy battlemechs and kill the pilot.
• The A-Wing and V-Wing in Rogue Squadron are the fastest ships in the game, but have the durability of paper.
  • Add to that the eponymous TIE Fighters from the game of the same name. Fast and maneuverable, but a single laser blast is likely to cripple your flimsy little craft, and a second is almost guaranteed to turn it to scrap. TIE Bombers fare a little better, but it isn't until the TIE Advanced that the TIE series of ships (not counting the sluggish Assault Gunboat) can actually take a bit of a beating.
• Twisted Metal:
  • Mr. Grimm in most games, being a fast motorcycle surrounded by larger vehicles with much better armor. It's also a Glass Cannon with one of the strongest specials in the series.
  • Twister is even faster than Grimm, being able to spin around fast enough to create a twister, but is just as fragile.
• Ace Combat's Spiritual Successor, Vector Thrust introduces the F-15 Streak Eagle and its rival P-42 experimental Flanker. Both aircraft exaggerate this trope by being able to outclimb a Saturn V rocket, but literally carry no armor nor weapons at all. Not even paint! They're considered by the fanbase to be joke characters.
• War Thunder has many. Ground units labelled as "light tanks" are almost always this, including vehicles that are actually armored cars. They excel in flanking and in capping strategic zones, but often you can thrash them with small caliber guns. Sometimes they are so fragile (or have an open top exposing the crew) that even a machine gun can reasonably kill them. The most blatant example is the R3, an Italian AA scout car, which is incredibly fast and incredibly squishy. Some tank destroyers like the Centauro and medium tanks like the Leopard I are also Glass Cannons, since they rely on mobility *and* firepower.
  • Airplanes too sometimes can fall into this category. The He-100 for its battle rate is absurdly fast, but it will catch fire or start losing oil/water for even a minimal scratch.
  • Patrol boats in naval battles are the epitome of this. Compared even to fast destroyers, they can quickly cap strategic zones while the rest of the team is still in open waters, they can also sometimes sneak in to launch a torpedo or two to enemies not paying attention to their side, but will die to a single cannon salvo.
• World of Tanks generally assigns this to the Light Tank class (once you get out of the Starter Equipment level of tiers), and some Tank Destroyers. They're very agile, able to make quick zig-zag turns and dodge like crazy in speeds in excess of 50 kph, but very few have any armor to speak of, and fairly low HP besides. Best exemplified by the German Lights like the Panzer I C, a teeny tiny tank that pulls 79 kph, turns at 48 degrees per second, and has only 210 hp — enough to be taken out in a single hit by the Tier 4s and 5s it will very likely encounter. Its thickest armor is 30mm, which is actually insufficient to keep it safe against some Tier 1 guns.
  • Zig-zagged in its stablemate World of Warships: destroyers have small health pools and thin armor, but lack citadels (so Attack Its Weak Point doesn't work against them) and their thin armor means shells above a certain size will more often than not go straight through them doing about a tenth of the damage.
• The sports car in Zombie Driver; it has little armor and doesn't plow through zombies very well, but goes like a Corvette on nitrous.

Visual Novels

• Aces High:
  • The Spitfire is a quite fast and maneuverable aircraft, but it's also not particularly tough.
  • On the ground, the Jeep and M-8 Greyhound, are fast and maneuverable, but only lightly-armored at best.
• Rider of Fate/stay night has poor endurance and no ability to take a hit, but she's incredibly agile and very fast, making her very difficult to hit, and can fight in conditions that other Servants would have problems with, such as while speeding up the side of a skyscraper (as Saber discovers to her dismay).
• In Sunrider, the Phoenix has the best speed and evasion of the player-controlled Ryders, spending only 10 energy to move one tile when most of the other Ryders need 20 or 30, but it also has the lowest base health. It also suffers from Crippling Overspecialization since its swords and submachineguns excel at destroying enemy Ryders but are worthless against capital ships. It comes with a stealth generator that allows the Phoenix to get in an enemy’s face without being shot to pieces, and in Sunrider Liberation Day this can be upgraded to a cloaking device that prevents enemies from targeting her at all for one turn.

Wide-Open Sandbox

• Minecraft: Players wearing elytra can glide and (using certain items or enough skill) outright fly. However, elytra are worn in place of chest armor, so this means having less protection compared to a full set of armor.
• The Simpsons Hit & Run: The secret Speed Rocket is the fastest vehicle and has the best acceleration in the entire game, but has exceptionally poor toughness. It can give off smoke after just one hit, and it would only take a few more before it explodes. To put things in perspective, the starting Family Sedan has a toughness of 3 while the most durable vehicle in the game has a toughness of 20. The Speed Rocket, however, has a toughness of 0.3.

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