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While they may not be Game Breakers, they're certainly good at breaking other characters in the game, when they aren't themselves being broken.


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    Action-Adventure 
  • Assassin's Creed Origins: Bayek can become one by equipping a cursed weapon. They have triple the damage outputnote  but cap health to one-third of normal.
  • In Control, Jesse Faden's paranatural abilities and weaponry can inflict horrendous damage in no time, but without her debris shield (which isn't all that strong and also prevents her from using most of her attacks) she's about as durable as an unarmored human can be expected to be when faced with hordes of enemies wielding firearms and supernatural abilities like her own. Her main defense consists of always being on the move to avoid getting hit in the first place and to drain health on enemies.
  • EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist: Blackberry has a wealth of magical spells at her disposal that makes it easy for her to nuke her foes. But her spells are as beholden to the same cooldown as everyone else's special attacks, making it easy to run out if she isn't judicuous with their use. And her physical stats are among the lowest in the game. When she has the resources, she can wipe most fights, but otherwise can be easily overwhelmed.
  • God of War III: An unlockable costume called "Fear Kratos" turns the Ghost of Sparta into a glass cannon, causing Kratos to deal and receive quadruple damage. On harder difficulties, Kratos can shred through the monsters of Olympus in seconds, but getting hit even once could be fatal.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: Red Wizzrobes' spells deal twice as much damage as that of Blue Wizzrobes — tied with Ganon himself for the most damage of any enemy in the game in fact — but they take less hits to kill, do less damage on bumping into them than the Blue ones, and have movement patterns that leave them more vulnerable.
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: 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 hit for two full hearts of damage, or 2/3 of Link's starting health. 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. Its Energy Ball attack is powerful, particularly in the 3DS remake, but it's easily stunned and takes only a few hits to defeat.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games: The Power rings increase damage both given and received, levels depending on the one equipped. Inverted with the Armor rings.
    • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Kalle Demos can strike fast in multiple directions, but it only has sixteen HP in total. With the right sword combo, it is possible to kill it in one round.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
      • The Barbarian Armor increases Link's damage output by 50%, making him able to kill things really quickly. However, the actual defense it gives is bad to middling at best, so you'll be able to take out Silver and Gold enemies with no sweat, but once hit, you'll be shedding a ton more Hearts than normal.
      • Royal Guard gear has very high attack power, eclipsing all other equipment in the game outside of Lynel gear or the fully powered Master Sword, but also has very low durability — it will deal punishing blows to enemies, but each piece will last much less before shattering than more modest but durable weaponry such as the regular Royal gear.
      • Guardian weapons are very plentiful and boast solid damage, especially the ++ versions from hard trials of might which can have damage numbers rivaling even the Master Sword at full power, and ignore the armor on overworld Guardians to let you punch outside of your weight class, but they all have extremely low durability, so you'll rarely get to keep one for more than a single fight.
      • The One-Hit Obliterator in the Champion's Ballad DLC take this up to eleven. Link is able to defeat any enemy in one hit, however the sheer power of the weapon reduces Link's health to 1/4 of a heart, making him die in one hit as well.
      • Octoroks shoot their projectiles with excellent aim and can take decent chunks out of Link's health in short order, but have so little health that all but the very weakest weapons will kill them in one shot.
      • In the early game, Yiga Footsoldiers can hit very hard, but a reasonably strong early-game weapon like the Soldier's Broadsword can take one down in four hits. They get a health boost and more powerful weapons after you kill Master Kohga, but any reasonably stronger weapon you have at that point can still kill them in a few hits.
      • Thunderblight Ganon is very powerful and very fast, but it's also the most frail of all the Blights.
  • Metal Gear Solid: Solid Snake is canonically a legendary supersoldier, but he takes a considerable amount of damage from anything. This problem only gets worse in the 4th game, where David has the body of a 70 year old man.
  • Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath: In the later parts, after being revealed as a Steef, any upgrades Stranger has are stolen by him, including health and armor. However, he later gains much more powerful versions of his ammo, a charge attack to replace his headbutt and, because of the fact that Moolah is no longer of use to him, he doesn't have to pull punches and keep enemies alive.
  • Ōkami: The Black Imps are supposed to be the most powerful of the imp enemies, yet can be killed easily with the more powerful weapons and Brush Techniques in the game.
  • Spider-Man (PS4) The Equalizer suit power from the Undies suit allows Spider-Man to down foes in one hit... while allowing enemies to down him in one hit.
  • Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order tries to reconcile challenge with the common complaint surrounding Star Wars games about lightsabers feeling like baseball bats. So while Cal's lightsaber is powerful (able to take out most lesser enemies in 1-2 strikes), it doesn't take many hits from swarming stormtroopers to die.

    Action-Platformer 
  • Castlevania franchise:
    • An extreme example is found in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. With the right DSS cards, Nathan can transform into one of the skeleton enemies; the bones he throws have a small chance of being giant bones that inflict 9999 damage. The catch? Any damage the skeleton takes is worth 9999 too. You'll never have that much HP, so this transformation is very risky.
    • In Order of Ecclesia, the Death Ring causes all your stats to shoot to impossible levels… but one hit will kill you.
    • Most of the later games have an unlockable glass cannon that you can play as after beating the game once. You usually get a third of the HP the main character has, and you can't use items or equip new weapons. To make up for it you get bigger, stronger weapons, a faster running speed, and special abilities like double-jumping, super-jumping, and sliding at the beginning of the game rather than gradually learning them. Examples include Richter from Symphony of the Night, Maxim from Harmony of Dissonance, Julius from Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, and Albus from Order of Ecclesia.
    • In Symphony of the Night the Ring of Ares is an item that turns Alucard himself into a glass cannon, minimizing his defense while drastically increasing his attack power.
      • There's also an enemy example in the Nova Skeleton, which has as much health as a normal skeleton (which is very little) but shoots a laser that can do at least 90 damage the first time you meet it.
    • Maria Renard in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood. She is amazingly powerful almost to the point of being overpowered with her double jump and animal buddies, but just a couple of hits and she's done.
  • Cave Story:
    • King, an NPC , is like this in the cutscenes. On the one hand, he's able to take out Balrog with one hit (which the player character can't do, even with the same weapon King used). On the other hand, he gets pushed around by Toroko, and a single hit from Misery is enough to mortally wound him.
      [Misery blasts King across the room.]
      The Doctor: My, are they really so fragile before the rage takes them?
    • The Player Character is this on Hard mode, with only 3 hit points and no health upgrades, leaving him a One-Hit-Point Wonder to all but the game's most minor mooks.
  • Milla from Freedom Planet can deal damage approaching that of Lilac and has a shield that deflects projectiles, but she has roughly half the health of the other characters (4HP vs. 7HP).
    • Torque has the same HP as Milla, but he has a wide range of projectiles that, if used correctly, can decimate most bosses in seconds!.
    • By boss standards, Lord Brevon takes a lot fewer blows than most of the game's other bosses, but his own attacks will shred through the player's health.
  • In a similar vein to the Katana ZERO example below, every non-boss character in Ghostrunner is this trope, including your protagonist: the titular mercenary can destroy every single enemy only using one well-placed katana blade, but a similar hit or a misplaced bullet gives him A Taste Of His Own Medicine.
  • In A Hat in Time, the Snatcher, the Subcon Forest spirit, is this: while he can only damage you one HP at the time, his attacks always cover a large area, making them extremely hard to dodge. However, once you turn him blue, he goes down in five hits, which is pretty fast when you compare to the miniboss of his forest who needs twice as much, or the boss of the previous area who needs thirty hits.
  • Katana ZERO being a Rocket-Tag Gameplay game, your titular character is this along the vast majority of enemies: he can kill countless Mooks in a single blade and slow down time to parry bullets, but a single hit forces him to start the section again.
  • Kirby:
  • Ko the mouse in Little Samson has only 2 points of health to start (and can get a maximum of 8 with upgrades), but moves fast and drops time bombs that can do heavy damage if the enemy takes the brunt of the explosion. a high-risk-high-reward character, basically.
  • Mega Man:
    • Zero of Mega Man X and Zero qualifies, especially compared to his fellow hunter X. He's a devastating close-range fighter, but he takes lots of damage and there's not much you can do to change that. X, on the other hand, gets tons of upgrades every game, and one of them is always an armor part that cuts the damage he takes in half. Thus Zero starts each game stronger than X but is outclassed heavily by the end. Capcom seems to like it that way, because they've twice provided secret armors for Zero that double the damage he deals and the damage he takes (Black Zero in X8, Junk Armor in Zero 4).
    • Proto Man has become this in the later games in the classic series. His charged shots deal a lot of damage (in Powered Up they kill most stage enemies in one hit), but he also takes a lot of damage; about twice as much as Mega Man.
    • In Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10, Mega Man can buy the Book of Hairstyles from the shop to remove his helmet. This turns him into this as it causes him to take double damage like Proto Man above.
    • In Mega Man 9, Splash Woman's Laser Trident is the most powerful attack in the game barring instant kills, but she's the only boss to take two points of damage from regular Mega Buster shots.
    • In Mega Man X6, Sigma has attacks which are strong and can be hard to dodge, but it is easy to attack him.
  • Psychonauts 2: Raz can purchase a power-pin called 'Glass Cannon', which doubles his attack power but also doubles the damage he receives.
  • Skylanders has Trigger Happy, introduced in the first game. He has a charged attack that can be more and more upgraded till it reaches its third and most powerful attack on his upper upgrade path and a safe lobbing attack that gets more powerful on the lower path. Trigger Happy himself, however, has the smallest amount of HP of the Skylanders debuting in Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, and he held the record for the lowest until Imaginators introduced Crash Bandicoot.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • Sonic wrecks robots like nobody's business and defeats Eggman's most powerful machines with almost as much ease. But if he loses his rings one hit can kill him.
    • Shadow's got incredible offensive power, but goes down just as easily as Sonic (and in games with actual health bars, even more easily). Even with Cutscene Power to the Max, he still can't take a hit.
    • As far as bosses go, Zor is the fifth member of the Deadly Six to challenge Sonic in Sonic Lost World and can only take half as many hits as the next-most-fragile member. Naturally, as Sonic encounters him so late into the game, Zor is capable of mounting offenses that make hitting him even once a challenge and is smart enough to only pick battlefields where he has the terrain advantage.
  • The Hammer Bros. from Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels are among the most dangerous enemies in these games due to their powerful offense. They don't have the immunities of the Buzzie Beetle or The Spiny, nor are they as difficult to reach as the Lakitu. However, they compensate for this by spamming the screen with hammers, which are thrown erratically and in an arc-shape which makes jumping over them, much less on them, highly precarious.
  • In the Touhou Project fangame The Mistress' Heart-Throbbing Adventure: The Cursed Mansion, Flandre is meant to be this in comparison to Remilia and Yuyuko. All of her attacks are the strongest you can dish out, thus ripping through enemies in short order. However, with the increased number of arcane crystals needed to raise your health — and them already being very rare to start with — her max health is likely to stay at 3HP for a very long time. That combined with the sheer number of enemies throughout her story and the increased Energy cost for creating healing items means you'll be seeing the Game Over screen frequently.

     Action RPG 
  • Bloodborne: The backstory states that armor and shields were useless against the raw strength of the beasts (as shown by the many corpses of knights in plate armor found strewn throughout the Chalice Dungeons). Thus, Gehrman pioneered the fighting style used by the Hunters, which focuses on pure speed and aggression in order to kill beasts faster than they can kill you.
  • Dark Souls is prone to this, the Tearstone Rings activate when your character is near death (red for damage, blue for defense), while Power Within pyromancy boosts your overall damage output while draining your health, combine both and you can One-Hit Kill most PvP opponents if you do it right.
    • Dark Souls III has the Morion Blade, a straight sword which increases damage when your character is near death. It also stacks with the aforementioned Red Tearstone Ring and and affects other weapons.
    • Depending on how stat allocation goes, anyone doing a pure Quality build. This is due to the fact that this build invests a lot of points in strength (STR) and dexterity (DEX) to use any weapon in the game; due to this, they can end up risking a lot of poise damage.
    • The Desert Sorceresses from Dark Souls II are virtually naked, and what little they are wearing is made out of cloth and leather, but they're terrifyingly potent pyromancers who will incinerate an unprepared Bearer of the Curse if they get cocky.
    • The entire player base near-unanimously agrees that the only "correct" way to play these games is to go full glass cannon and never use a shield or heavy armor, because it's better to just not get hit in the first place. Blocking consumes more stamina than dodging, no shield in the series provides 100% protection against all types of damage, not every attack can be blocked in the first place, and bosses will still flatten you in a few unblocked hits even in the tankiest armor available, especially on New Game Plus and beyond. You'll actually have far greater survivability if you strip completely naked and learn to dodge. Sure, the boss can now kill you in one hit, but before he was killing you in three hits, and now it's much harder for him to land that one hit.
  • Diablo III:
    • The Wizard prefers to teleport instead of tank. The class even has a passive skill called Glass Cannon (+15% to all damage, -10% defense and resistance), and tends to rely on energy shields for staying power.
    • The Demon Hunter is focused more on dodging (Vault) and staying at range than defense, since their specialty weapons are hand crossbows. Compared to other classes, their defense is extremely low, and there's very few ways to buff it, focusing more on pure attack power and damage.
    • The Necromancer's Blood Magic skills function this way, making spells cost Life in addition to Essence, with the trade-off being a large power boost. The Trag'Oul set provides a massive boost to Blood skills at the expense of costing twice as much Life, making the Necromancer even more of a glass cannon.
  • Eternal Radiance: Among the party members, Celeste has the highest base attack and mana attack, but the lowest HP and defense. This is balanced by her being the only playable character, meaning she can dodge and guard unlike her AI allies.
  • Hyper Light Drifter: The Drifter becomes this over the course of the game; you can dodge quickly and gain several devastating attacks, but you're stuck with the small HP pool you begin the game with, even as enemies become capable of dealing more damage.
  • Monster Hunter:
    • Hunters using the Hammer or Switch Axe classes of weapon have no defensive or evasive abilties. All they have is the basic dodge roll and the ability to deal ridiculous amounts of damage.
    • Before Monster Hunter: World, Gunner weapons had to wear modified armor that covered less of their body so that they can aim their weapons better. Unfortunately, this gives them the defensive strength of wet paper, so while they can output even more damage than a Blademaster in a faster time period, they can be one- or two-shotted by most monster attacks.
    • Monster Hunter Generations: Astalos is an Ax-Crazy electricity shooting wyvern that can charge its parts with electricity to hit even harder. However, any part it's got charged up takes more damage, until smacking it enough inevitably discharges the electricity.
    • Monster Hunter: World: Nergigante can put out staggering amounts of damage, but due to genetic stagnation over several generations, its health pool is very low compared to other Elder Dragons, meaning it goes down relatively easy.
  • Sinjid has the Assassin and Priest classes. The Assassin is fast and has the highest chances of landing critical hits, while the Priest has many powerful magic attacks at its disposal. Both don't do very well in direct combat.
  • Tokyo Xanadu features Yuuki Shinomiya, who tends to function as the XRC's resident Squishy Wizard in the Eclipse, having low base HP, shoddy defenses, but insane magic power and being capable of firing from the drone following him instead of needing to stop like every other character. Unlike Mitsuki, he cannot form force fields, meaning the player has to be significantly more careful with Yuuki if he engages in melee.
  • In Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed, Rex takes this role, Dual Wielding the Aegis swords and replicating the infamous crit-spamming build from his original game to tear apart enemies in seconds with nigh guaranteed criticals and a skill that recharges nigh instantly upon critting. Unfortunately for him, he can't crit-heal anymore and has the lowest HP and defenses of the group, meaning he can't stay for long once the aggro is on him.

    Beat'em Up 
  • Pink Ostrich in Battle Circuit. She has fairly high damaging moves when used right. In fact her power-up gives her higher chances to dish out critical hits, making her moves even more damaging. But she can only take a few hits with a (non)upgraded life bar. This is especially true against bosses.
  • From the Stylish Action game Bayonetta, Jeanne does 1.5x as much damage as Bayonetta and can build up combos twice as fast, but in turn takes 1.5x as much damage and cannot activate Witch Time except through a perfect dodge that activates Moth Within. Even more extreme, though, is Little King Zero, who does devastating damage but always takes exactly 7900 HP damage from enemy attacks (the cap for the game being 8000 HP), meaning he can only take two hits before he's done for.
  • In Bayonetta 2, Jeanne from above makes a return, but Secret Character Rosa easily surpasses her as the glass cannon in this game, as her weapons do three times as much damage by default as Bayonetta's attacks, plus her Super Mode puts her into the Mini-Mecha Umbran Armor which can devastate enemies with staggering, high damage combos. However, she also takes three times as much damage from enemies.
  • Dynasty Warriors likes this one in varying quantities, due to its large cast that hits each and every gaming archetype shamelessly just so the gameplay can support 70+ characters.
    • The worst is Cao Cao in Dynasty Warriors 3, where he could get a sword that killed Mooks in one hit (and damaged stronger enemies significantly) with a death-based elemental attack on a certain special move (which in turn filled up his Musou gauge nearly instantly), but was extremely weak defensively, to the point where he'd die frequently even though his near-constant Musou attacks made him invincible during their use.
    • In Dynasty Warriors 4, a special item could be applied to allow one's character to turn into the Glass Cannon: it halved defense while doubling offense.
    • Also one of Mori Ranmaru's two special abilities in Samurai Warriors 2 was to lower defense but raise offense, albeit this was as a command move with limited duration.
    • In Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires, it's possible to choose a specific set of items to buff your character's overall speed and power, making them moving really ast and hit really hard. The downside is all of these items drastically drop your defense, so you can be killed in a single blow by commander attacks, and lose huge chunks of health from casual blows by regular units.
  • Hyrule Warriors:
    • Wizzro, Cia, Lana, and Ruto. All focus on range and power but are vulnerable to combos while pulling their attacks off.
    • Giant Bosses have devastating attacks, but the vulnerability system lets you take them down in two to five combos if done right. Regular commanders get to block most combos and have much smaller windows to hit their vulnerability gauge, taking significantly longer to kill, particularly defensive ones, like Zant and Volga.
  • The Wild Dancer style in Like a Dragon: Ishin!. This style lets Ryoma wield a Sword and Gun to dish out tons of damage, but it comes at the cost of being unable to block.
  • Odin Sphere: Mercedes is definitely the Glass Cannon of the game, considering how much damage she dishes out contrasted with her basically non-existent HP. An astonishing number of things will One-Hit Kill Mercedes.
  • Sengoku Basara Heroes:
    • Ishida Mitsunari. Also a Fragile Speedster, his extremely fearsome melee range and rapid attacks turn him into this as well. Mitsunari is capable of tearing most enemies to shreds in melee but can't take it in return: At around level 30 his HP is about the same as most other characters' are at level 1, and his defense score is the second worst in the game after Kotaro's.
    • He's not the only one. His Dragon Yoshitsugu has very impressive range and crowd control abilities but since he's a sickly leper his health is pretty dinky (luckily both Mitsunari and Yoshitsugu are of the Dark element, meaning that with an elemental weapon they gain health by killing mooks). Also, any characters who use guns like Nouhime or Magoichi, who are pretty much Game Breakers when used properly.
  • In Senran Kagura, one can force your character to go into "Frantic" mode, lowering all her defenses (and leaving your character in her swimsuit) in exchange for high attack power. But if you don't finish your opponent, your opponent WILL finish you.
  • In Streets of Rage 4's Survival Mode, one of the passives that may randomly appear after completing a stage is called Glass Cannon. It vastly increases your damage output but also increases the amount of damage you take, with the first level of the passive being a +100% damage buff and a -60% defense debuff.
  • 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.

    Collectible Card Game 
  • Attack cards in Calculords generally follow this model — high offensive power, low health. It's very rare for an Attack card to have higher than 4 HP, and virtually none have armor to mitigate damage. Enemy commander Cpl. Krak specializes in using these cards, fitting her status as a crazed Death Seeker.
  • KanColle: Destroyers can punch far above their weight with Night Battle Cut-ins, as can torpedo cruisers with their opening torpedo attacks, but any stronger enemy type that survives and connects with return fire will lay a smackdown. Carriers are a downplayed version; their HP isn't that bad but merely suffering medium damage disables their shelling phase attacks, turning them into The Load.
  • The Wild Berry, Mushroom Ringleader, Zapricot, Carrotillery, Magnifying Grass, Tennis Champ, Exploding Imp, Pool Shark, Line Dancing Zombie and more from Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes can do considerable damage at the cost of having low health.
  • Shadow Era: Allies like Blake Windrunner and Belladonna have far more attack then they have health, able to kill many allies in a single hit but die just as quickly. Other's like Chimera can gain attack points by reducing their health. Shard of Power gives all your allies +2 attack by reducing them to one health.
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft: Any high attack/low hp card embodies this trope. Some of them have effects or abilities that makes them worth using regardless (the most infamous one being Leeroy Jenkins, a 6/2 that dies to almost any minion or cheap removal but has charge so it could attack your opponent directly if he didn't have any taunt up, which was nerfed and eventually kicked from standard for being too strong, especially when returned to the hand for another swing or buffed with spells), others..not so much (magma rager has been widely derided as the single worst classic card due to having a single point of health and no rush/charge, making it suceptible to anything your opponent could do to remove).
    • In battlegrounds mode, minions (and some hero power buffs) who prioritize attack over health fall under this trope, as well as AwesomeButImpractical in several cases. Since survival of your minions is crucial to win the combat struggle, low HP minions needs something else to make up for the lack of health (usually divine shield to survive an attack or poisonous to make sure they kill whatever they hit thats not protected with divine shield). Mechs and Murlocs are possibly the best examples of this but can still win games with the proper comp: the former do have some strong combat buffs as well as divine shield to compensate, and murlocs in the late game can scale very high thanks to buff minions and obtain poisonous to kill anything they fight.

    Eastern RPG 
  • Breath of Fire III and IV both have a spell called Last Resort that turns the user into this by converting all of their defense points to attack. Scias in 4 does this automatically if knocked to critical health.
  • Breath of Fire II has Katt. She has the highest attack power in the game, but also the lowest defense.
  • Dragon Quest:
    • In Dragon Quest III, Martial Artists are impressively strong even without a big weapon set, and boast a naturally high Critical rate. However, while they have decent HP, and their armor choices are lacking.
    • Dragon Quest IV: Maya is a very talented, powerful black mage, with strong offensive spells, but her defense is atrocious.
    • Dragon Quest VII: Ruff starts as a strong and fast but quite fragile fighter, and he has to grow into someone who can take a hit.
    • Dragon Quest IX: The Gladiator vocation is a rare melee variety. They can equip the strongest weapons in the game, have the highest Strength in the game to match, yet their defense isn't much to write home about and they can't equip shields by default. Subverted in the fact that they can equip some of the best armor in the game and are one Elite Tweak away from equipping shields. Double Subverted in the fact that one of their abilities, Double Up, turns them into a textbook Glass Cannon despite the above; it doubles their attack and halves their defense. However, one Buff spell from your priest and the primary weakness of this setup is gone, leaving you to kick ass without any worries.
    • Jessica of Dragon Quest VIII is the Squishy Wizard variety. She's got more varied and powerful offensive spells than any other character, a buff spell that doubles the target's offense, and can also use whips. A fully-buffed Twin Dragon Lash is capable of one-shotting some bosses. She's also got the lowest health in the party by a good margin — late game, she can have more MP than HP. Her armor options are also much worse than the other characters for much of the game, meaning she requires constant attention from The Medic to keep her standing.
    • Veronica in Dragon Quest XI has the most Magical Might out of the whole party, and has buff spells to make her Frizzles and Crackles hit even harder. She has the lowest HP and defenses out of everyone though.
  • Elohim Eternal: The Babel Code: Ruthia has the highest Elemental Power and Divine Power growth of the party, but also the least LP growth.
  • Etrian Odyssey:
    • Etrian Odyssey:
      • The Ronin class possess incredibly high attack power, and have exclusive access to one of the strongest classes of weapon, but can equip very little in terms of armor, leaving them quite vulnerable.
      • The Highlander in The Millennium Girl remake can perform powerful Spear attacks at the cost of a part of his HP, thus overlapping with Cast from Hit Points (and his defense isn't too high either). A Highlander class is added in later games, retaining these characteristics.
    • Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard: The Gunner class can be considered a Glass Cannon, except Gunners are supposed to be back-row characters anyway, which mitigates their low defense, to an extent. A more proper example, however, would be a Hexer specialized in using Revenge: so long as its HP is low, they'll be able to deal huge damage (up to 255% the amount of damage they've taken). As long as you can keep them alive, of course.
    • Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City: Arbalists possess an immense Strength stat but in the process sacrifice Vitality and Agility. Their Front Mortar skill can do even more damage from the front row but exposes them to more harm. Shogun in the same game have similarly impressive Strength, but their ability to Dual Wield reduces their capability of equipping armor and their attack-boosting skill also reduces their defense.
    • Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan:
      • The Bushi are capable of impressive damage output, but the associated skills are Cast from Hit Points. Given that they also can only wear medium-strength armor, they are prone to dying if not supplemented with healing.
      • Imperials can do damage in the thousands with their Drive skills, but doing so lowers their turn speed and imposes a defense penalty until the attack executes, putting them at risk of dying easily before they attack. Otherwise the class functions like a Mighty Glacier.
    • Etrian Odyssey V: Beyond the Myth: The Masurao class can unlock a Legendary Title, Blade Dancer, that allows wielding up to four blades at once, which makes for a very powerful frontline attacker. However, each of those extra swords takes up an equipment slot that could go towards armor instead, meaning that a quad-wielding Masurao can easily tear apart random encounters but will keel over at the poke of a finger if they're not sufficiently protected by the rest of the party.
  • Fate/EXTRA has the playable Caster. She has the worst Endurance growth of the three playable Servants, but her Magic growth is the best of all of them, and it is laughably easy to max out. Combine her usually abysmal Endurance with how she also has the least HP of the three, and she quickly becomes this by the endgame, surviving by coming out on top of the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, rather than soaking up hits.
  • Fate/Grand Order:
    • In the game's Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, Berserkers do at least 1.5x damage to nearly everything offensively, but take double damage from nearly everything defensively.note  Berserkers tend to dish out ridiculous damage numbers, and then die to any enemies still standing unless they have some kind of evasion or survival skill.
    • Jeanne d'Arc Alter boasts the highest attack stat in the game on top of a flat damage multiplier from her Avenger class, hits almost everything at least neutrally, has three abilities that all boost her offenses in some way, and synergizes brilliantly with top buff-focused Servant Merlin. She also has terrible HP for her rarity, her only defensive ability is Cast from Hit Points, and her only defensive advantage is against Rulers.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • The Black Belt/Monk character from Final Fantasy has staggering attack power and speed and won't last if an enemy pokes him. The class's physical defense value is equal to their level, which means they can have the highest defense in the game. The trade-off is the fact that their magic defense is pitifully low. There's a head armor item, the Ribbon, which drastically decreases magic damage, but only has a defense value of 1. Considering the other armor the class can equip is almost equally weak in terms of preventing physical damage, and you either have him glass against physical attacks, or glass against magic.
    • Final Fantasy IV:
      • Rydia and Palom have powerful attack magic but suffer from low HP and weak defenses.
      • Tellah becomes this after he learns all of his best spells in an epiphany. He actually starts out with a respectable amount of HP relative to the other characters in the beginning, but his old age catches up with him quickly. As he levels up, his magical stats increase, but his physical stats actually decrease. After a while, he ends up being the usual mage that dies in two hits, but can blow up the entire enemy party in one.
      • Edge has fairly good damage output, but tissue-paper defense, so it's not at all uncommon to spend a lot of his time faceplanted — which makes his derision of Rosa and Rydia fairly egregious, since he's not much hardier than Rydia and thus needs Rosa's White Magic quite frequently. You can at least mitigate this in the DS version by giving him the Long Reach augment and shoving him in the back row.
    • Final Fantasy VII:
      • Tifa attacks quickly and can deal impressive damage, especially with her unique Limit Break which stacks all the limit breaks she has learned. Notably she is the only character to gain weapons that increase her damage the more debilitating status effects she has, if it weren't for the damage cap she could be doing the most damage in the game. However, her HP is mediocre at best, and the fact that she must be in the front row to deal full damage makes her even squishier.
      • Any character can become this if loaded up with enough attack magic Materia, which boosts the MP and Magic stats while nerfing HP. The most likely candidates are Aeris and Red XIII, since they have the strongest natural Magic stats to start with and weapons that grant many Materia slots.
    • Final Fantasy IX: Vivi has the powerful attack magic and weak defenses of the archetypal Black Mage. Eiko can become one if you teach her Holy.
    • Final Fantasy X:
      • Dark Shiva in Final Fantasy X International. Her most powerful attack will do, to maxed out characters, nearly 90,000 damage, and the others have pretty nasty status-related properties, one of them inflicting Death, Berserk and Confuse, and the other removing * all* positive statuses, both of them doing fairly decent damage too. On top of that, she's lightning fast. However, her HP and Defence are extremely low.
      • Everyone ends up as this after you get them Celestial Weapons (which have Break Damage Limit and ignore defense) but before you can finish the sphere grid, which takes a lot of Level Grinding. When Tidus has 20,000HP and can dish out 99,999 damage, a confuse attack can lead to your entire party murdering itself in one hit each. Just another reason to hate those horrifying Greater Malboros.
      • Final Fantasy X-2 has a few. Berserkers are very strong but have pitiful defense, and Alchemists can mix some powerful attacks but have low HP & Def.
    • Filo in Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings. She has one of the strongest attacks in the game, but letting her near ranged enemies typically results in her quick death.
    • The Parivir job of Final Fantasy Tactics A2 is offensively the strongest hume job available, but has the endurance of wet paper if raised as a Parivir.
    • Final Fantasy XIII:
      • Hope. With some nice weapon upgrades and the potential to throw some killer accessories on him, combined with having the highest natural magic stat in the game, he can slaughter enemies in seconds... and he had better, given his pitiful HP (the lowest in the game by a significant amount). What's more, given the way battles and stats work in this game, lots of players give up on "decent survivability for Hope" as a lost cause and choose to augment instead his damage (and his healing output — he is hands-down the best Medic in the game). Add a few hundred points to his Magic stat and give him the Auto-Faith granting accessory, and watch the fur fly. He even has a weapon that further boosts his magic ludicrously. at the cost of lowering his HP to horrifying amounts.
      • Lightning is also an example. She has the second best Strength and ties for second best magic, and she excels in both the Ravager and Commando roles, making her an excellent damage dealer in any situation. However, she also has the second worst HP, and when you eventually unlock her Sentinel role, you'll find that she has no Guard abilities (though she does have a great evasion-based setup, thus playing into the Fragile Speedster style).
      • In Final Fantasy XIII-2, the rare drops of Lightning and Amodar (Coliseum DLC) can turn Serah and Noel into one. The accessories boost Strength/Magic by 66%, but halves their HP and gives them a constant poison effect.
  • Ivan from Golden Sun is the magical powerhouse of the party, and properly equipped, he can do massive physical damage, too. He's got the lowest defense of the group. The game takes this a little far; he's also the most emotionally fragile party member.
  • Hero King Quest: Peacemaker Prologue:
    • Spiderweb is the main physical attacker of the party and starts the game with an AOE skill, but her defense and HP are low.
    • Sanguine, as a Squishy Wizard, has more HP and less defense than Spiderweb, but can deal massive single-target fire damage.
  • Heroes of the Seasons: Nuker characters have the best offensive capabilities, but have little defense or ways to protect themselves from damage.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • Aqua. She's the mage, next to a Fragile Speedster and The Big Guy. She ends up with the highest magic, best weapon, and the second best attack. However, being mage-type she still suffers from low health and defense compared to said big guy. Doesn't stop her from being the most effective of all of them.
    • Squishy Wizard Donald too. The good: magic includes healing. The bad: he's relatively easy for the Heartless to stomp.
    • In Kingdom Hearts II, Anti Form can put out some serious damage with its fast combos, but it causes Sora to take 50% more damage, prevents him from healing by any means, and you cannot gain any XP with it.
    • Both Sora and Riku in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] have defensive stats that are absolutely pitiful compared to those of their Dream Eater allies, on top of already taking more damage than them due to the damage formulas (For instance, the Dream Eater take 50% more damage on Critical Mode, whereas Sora and Riku take three times as much). The damage formula favors them, allowing to cause far more damage than their allies.
    • Kingdom Hearts III: Re𝄌Mind has Kairi, whose HP and Defense stats are significantly lower than Sora's. But she has attack power to rival Sora's Ultima Weapon, a much longer reach on combos, and one of the most powerful shotlocks in the game.
  • Knight Eternal: Dylan has good growth in Intellect and Agility, but poor HP and Strength growth.
  • Light Fairytale: Kid has the highest speed and can dual-wield daggers, which means she can stack a two elemental orbs on her weapons for increased damage. However, she's not very durable.
  • The Sundown Kid in Live A Live deals a lot of damage with his guns and one skill has a random chance of dealing max damage, but he also has the lowest health of any character.
  • The eponymous heroine in Lufia & The Fortress of Doom. While her magic resistance is just as high as her magic offense, physical attacks will squish her quite easily.
  • The mages of Majesty: Fantasy Kingdom Sim are absolutely brutal nuke-machines on higher levels and practically required to knock down some of the most powerful enemies. The problem is actually keeping them alive until they reach the higher levels, with what so little HP that a falling leaf would down them.
  • In Mario & Luigi games, Mario attacks first, has more fire power than Luigi and a bigger "magic" reserve for Bros. attacks, but he endures less HP, a weaker defense and less mustache points (the game's luck system) than his brother.
    • In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, the "Great Force" item (based on the Triforce) doubles all damage, regardless of whether it's being given or taken.
    • In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, the Daredevil Boots item practically exemplifies the trope. On one hand, your attack power is doubled. On the other hand… you die in one hit. Fail to dodge even the weakest Goomba and you keel over.
  • The Archer line of classes in MapleStory fall into this category by the endgame, gaining some of the most powerful attacks in terms of raw DPS, but dying in 2 hits to enemies twenty or more levels below them, and a single hit (without HP-increasing buffs) to many bosses with unavoidable magic attacks.
  • The RPG Mega Man X: Command Mission takes cues from the main series and naturally portrays Zero as such. Taking to the logical extreme when he eventually obtains a bad-ass looking fire sword called the Red Lotus Saber that turn Armor and Shield points into raw Power. Offensively it's so powerful it renders his ultimate combo skill and the secret Absolute Zero armor virtually pointless, but then he takes over twice the damage other party members do from the same attacks when equipping it.
  • The Hare species from Monster Rancher, especially in the series' earlier incarnations, is an entire race of Glass Cannons. They tend to have extremely high attack and speed, but their HP and defense are quite pathetic. Their speed makes them hard to hit, but if they do, they're in for a world of hurt.
    • The pixie even more so. Lowest HP, high speed, and deadly magic attacks.
  • Mother series:
    • Buzz Buzz from EarthBound (1994) was very powerful for a character that early on in the game. However he is killed (by swatting) easily by Pokey's mother, who apparently thought he was a dung beetle.
    • Kumatora can deal out way more damage than she can take.
    • The cake is well and truly taken, however, by Ana from the first game: Her Offensive PSI repertoire is absolutely insane, complete with the only two official one-hit kill moves in the entire series, but she's almost laughably easy to take out. Paula from the second game is similar in this aspect, although it's toned down a bit.
  • Remeer and Ferris, the two selectable playable protagonists from Mystic Ark. Next to the fighter and ninja, they're the best hitters of the game, but have some of the lowest Guard in the game. Getting trapped in the haunted mansion world alone doesn't make this any better.
  • Mipsy in NeoQuest II can use many powerful spells (offensive and defensive) and so is of valuable assistance in battle. Her HP doesn't leave the double digits until she hits level 23, though, and coupled her low defense and the fact that many early-game monsters' normal attacks hit for around 10-20 HP at a time....
  • Nocturne: Rebirth:
    • Many enemies/familiars like the cat family and the Evil Swordsman have good offense and speed while having low defense, though Sorceries can help to either balance their stats or make them even more extreme examples of this trope.
    • The Falling Star solo party formation can increase Reviel's attack, magic, critical rate, accuracy, and speed while lowering his physical and magical defenses. As a bonus, he also gets the Sidewinder passive for free, allowing him a chance of following any physical attack with a basic attack spell.
    • The Author Avatar of Shou also counts when he guards the Developer's Room. He can dual-cast spells that deal damage in the thousands, but if even one of your characters survives the assault and strikes back, they'll find that Shou is a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
  • The infamously game-breaking "Danger Mario" build in Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. When Mario is at 5 HP or less, he is put in the "Danger" state. In both games, there is a late-game NPC who you can pay to increase one stat at the cost of lowering another. If you lower Mario's maximum HP to 5, he will be in the Danger state permanently. Then you pile on multiple copies of badges which raise Mario's Attack and Evasion while in the Danger state until Mario can One-Hit Kill anything that isn't a boss and is almost impossible to hit. Almost. Occasionally you'll come across an enemy that can ignore Evasion. That's what Life Shrooms are for. If you want to turn this trope up to eleven, there's also the Peril Mario build, which is exactly the same as Danger Mario, except it revolves around stronger versions of these badges that only work when Mario is in the "Peril" state — at 1 HP.
  • Persona 4:
    • Yukiko Amagi. Even in the early game, Yukiko possesses insane magic parameters, being both your main magic caster and healer until Teddie appears. Furthermore, Yukiko is the only party member to learn a Severe-type Fire spell — Burning Petals — on top of learning Salvation and Mind Charge via Scooter Dates, the former restoring the entire party's health and removing any status effects, while Mind Charge makes Yukiko a borderline Game-Breaker for allowing her to do obscene damage. Naturally, these amazing magical parameters are offset by her atrocious endurance, and it takes one ice spell or heavy physical attack to put her in grave danger. It's telling when you realize the only other dedicated healer — Teddie — is far better at survival than she is.
    • Naoto Shirogane. Unlike Yukiko, she doesn't learn any healing spells, but this is very much offset by having an extremely diverse set of offensive moves: on top of having great physical attacks and learning all four of the single-target '-dyne', Naoto is also the only party to naturally learn all the Hama and Mudo spells, and is also the only one to naturally learn the Megido spells and Mind Charge. Combine this with her insane magical perameters, and Naoto's capable of putting down a lot of hurt very quickly. Sadly, these insane offensive parameters are counteracted by her awful resistance, possibly even worse than Yukiko, despite having no elemental weaknesses. In other words, she's the Black Magician Girl of the Investigation Team; insane firepower, but no survivability.
      • Golden attempts to offset this with her unique Shield of Justice skill, which completely nullifies one attack on every member of the party. It costs a hefty 150 MP per use though, so it's best saved for attacks that do devastating damage and are telegraphed.
  • Persona 5:
    • Ann Takamaki. Her Magic stat is the game's highest, and she learns Concentrate to boost her magic damage even further. She also learns Blazing Hell, which deals severe fire damage to all enemies. However, her small HP pool and party-lowest Endurance mean she can't take what she dishes out, and she'll be going down pretty quickly without help.
    • The "Merciless" difficulty turns everyone into this thanks to adding a 2.5x multiplier to critical damage. If someone gets a critical hit, technical or exploits a weakness, just about everyone can be killed instantly. This applies to both the player and the enemies.
  • The Pokémon series has a bunch of these. Competitively speaking, they're often referred to as "sweepers" — 'mons which are built to take down as many foes as they can before going down first. Glass Cannons in the series also tend to overlap with Fragile Speedster.
    • Attack Forme Deoxys is the most extreme example in the entire series. Mega Evolutions and similar transformations aside, it has the highest Special and second-highest Physical Attack of all Pokémon (and great Speed), but both Defenses are at rock bottom (it's tied for the lowest Special Defense and tied for 4th in regular Defense of all Pokémon). This is especially egregious in Pokémon GO, where Deoxys-A is an EX Raid boss. An EX Raid is a Tier 5 raid and as such usually requires several people to complete, but Deoxys-A can be taken down alone with even just a decent party and a few Max Revives.
    • Archeops. It has good speed, base Attack higher than Salamence, and great Special Attack, but not only are both forms of Defense poor, it has the Ability Defeatist, which halves both Attack stats when it gets below half health.
    • Staraptor has high speed and attack, and unlike most other Pokemon listed here its bulk isn't terrible. However, its most powerful moves decrease its survivability. These include Close Combat, which is a 120 Base Power Fighting Move that decreases the user's Defense and Special Defense, and Brave Bird, a 120 Base Power Flying Move that makes the user take 33% of the damage dealt.
    • Another Fossil Pokémon, Rampardos, has the highest Attack of all in the game aside from Olympus Mon-esque and transformed Pokémon. Hell, even its pre-evolution Cranidos has higher Attack than many fully evolved Pokémon (and yes, including some Olympus Mons). One of Rampardos' Abilities, Sheer Force, further boosts its attacks by 30% if they have a secondary effect. Oh, and since Life Orb's health drain is counted as a secondary effect, you can get a 69% Attack boost on top of its already astronomical Attack, with the only drawback being a severely limited movepool. Alternately, Rampardos has access to Head Smash, a move with base power equivalent to that of a Hyper Beam and deals 50% more damage due to being a Rock-type attack. However, said attack deals 50% damage dealt back as recoil. Combine that with its poor defenses and ludicrous Attack, and it'll One-Hit Kill itself with this attack. Its Rock-typing, a type with five weaknesses, doesn't help it much.
    • Flareon is similarly infamous. It's a Fire-type, it has a massive 130 Attack, and it finally received Flare Blitz in Generation VI. A Choice Banded Flareon can knock two-thirds of Arceus's health off in one shot. Unfortunately, it's also really slow, its HP and Defense are poor, and though its Special Defense is pretty great, it's a Fire-type and therefore weak to most things that use special attacks anyway. On top of that, Flare Blitz is Cast from Hit Points, meaning Flareon's liable to keel over by itself after a few hits.
    • Shuckle is a more extreme case when Power Trick is used on it, switching defense with attack stats, and Shuckle has the highest of both forms of defense in the games. Give it a decent Attack (like, say, Rollout, which gains power as the move continues and deals 50% more damage when Shuckle uses it), and it would be devastating — of course, at this point it'll keel over if you look at it the wrong way.
    • Ice-types and Dark-types, generally. The former is one of the strongest offensive types (super-effective against four types, one of which is Dragon) but the worst defensive type, only having one resistance (to itself) and four common weaknesses. The latter is just this by statistics. Combine the two types, and you have a shining example of the Glass Cannon-Fragile Speedster overlap as well: Weavile. It's the fastest Dark and Ice-type there is (125 base Speed) and has great Attack (120 base), but its Defense is lackluster, its health is below average, and it has a poor typing, making it weak to five different types, one of which is a double weakness.
    • Also, Fire-types are generally offensive powerhouses but have many common weaknesses. The metagame crippled them when the infamous entry hazard Stealth Rock came out, particularly the Fire/Flying ones that originally were used to defend against Ground-type moves.
    • Fighting types by far. These types of Pokemon commonly carry powerful moves and have a powerful Attack and a rare powerful Special Attack, but typically have poor defenses, mixed to low HP and useless resistances (Except to Rock). Primeape, for example, have a useful and lethal set of punch moves, above average Attack and powerful Fighting moves like Cross Chop and Close Combat, but pathetic defense and low HP. One use of Drill Peck or Psychic against it and it's instantly in trouble.
    • Psychic-types in general, really. Alakazam, for example, was a Game-Breaker in Gen I, due to high Sp. Attack and an immunity to Ghost-type attacks; however, their Physical Defense is almost always pitifully low — one successful Night Slash or Megahorn and they can cry "Uncle!"
    • The move Shell Smash can turn the user into this, sacrificing defenses for huge offensive and Speed boosts. As can Power Trick, depending on the user (particuarly Shuckle, as mentioned above).
    • A rare Fighting/Steel Pokemon is Lucario. It can dish out a lot of damage against the opposing Pokemon and has good speed. In terms of defenses, however, it's relatively weak and can get KO'ed easily.
      • Lucario's Glass Cannon status is highlighted more in Super Smash Bros. Brawl where his Aura properly forces him to deal a lot of damage at low health while at the same time makes him more vulnerable to being knocked out of the stage easily with very simple attacks. Even at full health, Lucario still gets beaten up around the stage easily.
    • Pokémon X and Y introduces the Steel/Ghost BFS Aegislash. In Shield Form, it's a Stone Wall with great defenses but bad attacking stats. In Sword Form, those defenses are swapped with its attack, giving it Attack and Special Attack on par with legendaries... and rather pitiful defenses. Its low health will not save it if it takes a hit in Sword Form, but its ridiculous defenses will allow it to shrug off more than a few super-effective hits in Shield Forme.
    • Also introduced in X and Y is Aurorus. Offensively, it's strong against many different Pokémon, and the only types that can resist its STAB combination are Water/Fighting, and most Steel-types. Defensively is where it really falls apart. Rock/Ice has been calculated to be the worst type combination in the game. It's weak to Grass, Water, Ground, Rock, Fighting, and Steel, the last two being double weaknesses. Attacks of those types are extremely common in the metagame, especially Ground and Fighting. Steel getting an offensive buff in that generation did not help the poor sauropod at all.
    • Mega Beedrill is particularly noteworthy since its Mega Evolution doesn't touch its pitiful defenses or terrible typing. Instead it gains a massive boost to Attack and Speed along with a new ability that boosts the damage of its STAB moves. End result: A Pokemon that will annihilate anything that doesn't resist its attacks and will die horribly if an enemy sneezes in its direction.
    • The various Ultra Beasts introduce three of these: Pheromosa carries excellent attack and blinding speed but both of its defenses are very lacking and it will go down to anything that flies, Xurkitree has somewhat mediocre defensive stats and HP but its Special Attack is so high it's impossible to stall, and Kartana has similarly ludicrous Attack (currently the game's highest excluding Megas) and Defense but low HP and absolutely awful Special Defense that makes sure it gets wiped if anything with a fire and/or special attack looks at it.
    • Unlike most Rock-types, which tend towards Stone Wall or Mighty Glacier, Rockruff and Lycanroc have low Defense but fairly high Attack and Speed (especially Midday Lycanroc, whose Attack stat is nearly double its Defense and Special Defense).
    • Salazzle has great speed and high special attack, but its defenses are very low. It also suffers from a mediocre HP stat and a double weakness against ground.
    • If Pikachu holds a Light Ball, it doubles both its Attack and Special Attack note , allowing it to hit extremely hard. However, as it's a middle-stage Pokemon with stats on par with most basic unevolved Pokemon, its Speed and defenses are mediocre at best, allowing for any fully-evolved Pokemon capable of withstanding its impressive power to take it down with little effort.
    • Out of the Sinnoh lake trio, Azelf fills this role, having 125 in each of its offensive stats (to put this in perspective, that means its firepower is equivalent to the likes of Gyarados and Marshadow) and very good speed, but middling-at-best defenses.
    • Absol has a very high Attack stat on par with many legendaries, but its Defenses are terrible. Unfortunately for it, its Speed isn't anything to write home about either, so it's likely to keel over before it can move unless it Mega Evolves.
    • In the fanmade game Pokémon Uranium, the Nuclear type is made of this. Nuclear-type attacks are super effective against almost every type in the game, minus itself and Steel, but in return Nuclear-type Pokémon also take super effective damage from every type in the game (minus itself, but including Steel).
  • Radiant Arc: Lexie and Lumi have high physical attack and agility, but low HP and defenses. This is even more true if the player places them in the front row, boosting their attack and speed but making them more likely to be targeted by close-range attacks.
  • Re:Kuroi:
    • Kaito has the best attack growth and can greatly boost the damage of the party's spells with his Mana Stream spell, but has fairly low HP and defense.
    • Asha has high speed, can buff her attack, and can quickly refill the party's MP, but her defenses are low.
  • Rise of the Third Power:
    • Corrina, Arielle, Reyna, Aden, and Natasha all have about the same HP growth, which is much lower than Rowan, Rashim, and Gage's growth. However, they all have much better offensive stat growth than the tank characters.
    • There's an accessory named Glass Cannon, which increases damage dealt and taken by the wearer.
  • Romancing SaGa has several; Romancing SaGa 3 has Muse, Leonid, and Fairy. Muse has 6 LP and no weapon levels but can easily learn techniques, Leonid can remain in your party even when he runs out of LP and has 20 in several weapon types but he only has 1 LP and can only heal by drinking your allies blood (so in the final battle he falters) Fairy has decent levels in weapons but only 7 LP and a piece of permanent equipment taking up a vital slot for equipment, it also is weak against attacks used on flying creatures. Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song has Captain Silver, very powerful but only 7 LP.
  • Joachim's Golden Bat form in Shadow Hearts: Covenant halves his HP and disables his skills and spells, but makes his attacks deal double damage. Hildegard's Pink Bat form in Shadow Hearts: From The New World is similar (and also loses half her defense), though she can still use a couple of her techniques.
  • Killey, a mediocre and overall forgettable character who debuted in Suikoden II, can be made into one of these in Suikoden V, as he's one of the very few characters who has three fully customizable rune slots. Load him up with a combination of Power (+50% damage, -50% Defense), Double-Edge (Doubles damage dealt and received) and/or Boost (Doubles damage for 3 turns, then your HP drops to 1) runes and watch his dinky little throwing knife hit for upwards of 3000 damage per round, in a game where even bosses rarely have more than 3-4000 HP. Just keep him well out of harm's way, as a stiff breeze paired with all those damage multipliers WILL knock him dead.
  • Not as extreme as some of the other examples, but Geno from Super Mario RPG. He has got powerful physical attacks and strong non-elemental specials with below average HP, and weak special attack and defense. One can use the level-up mechanic to take away his weaknesses and turn him into a Lightning Bruiser.
  • Tales Series:
    • Leon Magnus of Tales of Destiny is this combined with Fragile Speedster, especially in the remake, with easily spammable and hard-hitting abilities and techniques, but very low HP. He's pretty similar in the sequel.
    • Colette Brunel from Tales of Symphonia is, in a way, a Glass Cannon. She's slow, has sub-par HP and DEF, but despite her deceptive ATK, she has easily some of the strongest hits in the game. For example, her Para Ball tech only uses 14 TP, but deals out 4.6 times her normal damage, which is higher than an average Level 3 tech.
    • Rita Mordio of Tales of Vesperia qualifies. As a mage, she deals the highest damage out of all the party members and is arguably the cheapest character in the game, but if any bosses get near her she's good as dead. Strangely, this quality isn't reflected in the storyline.
    • Beryl Benito of Tales of Hearts. In a game where four out of six characters have spells and everyone has techs, Beryl marks herself as the Squishy Wizard with high Tech Attack and spells in four elements, more than any other playable character, and three of the highest-level spells (there are seven, and only one of each in the whole party). She also has significantly less HP than everyone else, and dies very fast on any difficulty higher than Normal unless she was taken along a growth path that sacrifices either abilities or spells for increase stats.
    • Hubert Oswell, of Tales of Graces is an extremely versatile and hard-hitting melee character, putting out some of the strongest numbers among the cast, but his defense is also extremely low, meaning in order to properly make use of him you REALLY need to learn how to dodge.
  • View from Below: Ash has higher base offensive stats and MP than Cloaked Figure, especially if the player completes the Shadow Knight's challenges. However, his HP and base DEF are lower. His lower AGI also means he won't get as many opportunities to dodge attacks from faster enemies. If the player has no deaths on their run, they can use the statues of strength to sacrifice 8 of Ash's Max HP in exchange for 5 more ATK.
  • In Wild ARMs 3, you get a sand ship, which you can customize at the cost of moderately rare items. You can increase various stats of your ship, but if you just scrape up enough to buy the best cannon and arrange your party properly so you always go first, you can use the "Fire All Ammo" command and one-shot anything you fight in it. At all. Including the boss blocking you form accessing the larger portion of the sand-sea.
  • Citan of Xeno Gears fame can be this late in the game with the right setup. Give him a Power Crisis, a powerful sword, optionally some Drives to boost his stats and drop his HP below 10%, and he'll do enough damage with deathblow combos to take out even Gear-sized enemies. It's not as risky as you'd think, either - all giant enemies are coded to target Gears first (as, to be fair, any other character would stand no chance against a giant enemy on foot). That said, he must have his HP at very low values to do this trick, so one full-party attack or human-sized enemy getting an attack in and he'll probably be dead.
    • Elly zigzags this; she is the archetypal party mage, though her spells are somewhat middling by default. Equipping her with an Ether Doubler (doubles spell damage and EP cost) makes them very strong, though. Equipping her Gear with a Power Magic on top makes her Aerods attack extremely powerful, capable of one-shotting several bosses. Of course, she still retains her low HP, physical strength and durability even with her newfound amazing damage output.
    • Emeralda's gear Crescens falls under this umbrella too, with damaging attacks and very fast turn speed but the lowest HP of any Gear when fully equipped.

    Fighting 
  • BlazBlue:
    • Ragna the Bloodedge has a very high damage output, but has the second lowest HP in the game and rather sucky defense. Not even the life-draining ability that he has is rectifying much of the problem. He doesn't have ranged attacks or a sword long enough to play keep-away with, either. As a warning, this is the game's main character. Ironically enough, in the story mode, he often winds up getting injured somehow, seriously or not, and he often leaves himself open to attacks and insults in conversations with other characters.
    • Nu-13 has very good damage, especially with spam her Drive, but she shares the second lowest HP place with Ragna and her defence ain't too hot either. As it is she's reviled already; she would be a full-blown SNK Boss if it got any better.
    • In the third game, there's Amane Nishiki who has even lower HP and defense than Ragna but can take off huge chunks of your own health, even on block. Especially on block.
    • Nine the Phantom from the fourth game has some incredible damage potential, but has the second lowest health (10500) in the cast and consequently, is about as durable as wet tissue paper.
  • Shin Akuma and Ultimate Rugal in Capcom vs. SNK 2 have insane attack power, but they also take far more damage than any of the other characters. Naturally, since they're classified as SNK Bosses, this doesn't seem to be a problem at all for the computer... if they let you hit them.
    • Akuma having low defense has been a recurring gameplay mechanic to his character since the Street Fighter Alpha series to balance out his high-damaging offense options. He didn't have this handicap for his first few video game appearances since Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, which led him to be banned for competitive play.
  • In the Mascot Fighter Cartoon Network: Punch Time Explosion, Chowder's burping, spinning and Kimchi fart attacks hit hard and have good range, but he's too light and he can get KOed at 85% with a really strong hit.
  • Alpha-152 in Dead or Alive can be classed as this. She can easily take away half your life bar in a single combo or a well-timed offensive hold, along with being able to critical burst within 3 hits. However, she lacks regular wake up kicks, her counters are rendered useless if the opponent is backed against a wall and her floating stance leaves her floating helplessly long enough for an opponent to attack her. Of course, none of this applies when facing her AI.
  • Saiyan Time Patrollers in Dragon Ball Xenoverse and Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 have this as their schtick. They have the lowest health of any race other than Frieza Race characters, but compensate by hitting hard and getting stronger at lower health.
  • The King of Fighters:
    • Shen Woo. Incredible strength, short and easy-to-connect combos, fast and powerful fisticuff-based attacks… and such a low defense that it only takes five or six hits to knock him out.
    • Bao is an even more blatant example. He's got such awful defenses that a single combo ending in a SDM can either kill or bring him in the red. On the other hand, his specials and Supers do an absolutely sickening amount of damage — he has one of the few Supers that, when used properly, can result in a One-Hit Kill.
  • Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has Storm, who is ridiculously mobile, builds meter very quickly, has some fantastic space-controlling moves and the two single best supers in the entire game, covering the entire screen with lightning or calling down a hail of ice shards that hits nearly the entire screen for a good amount of damage even when blocked (and is very safe to DHC into). Her health is among the lowest of all the characters, but she's considered god-tier for good reason.
  • Marvel vs. Capcom 3:
    • Phoenix dies in two hits, provided that she doesn't kill her opponent in five. And that's not even counting her Dark Phoenix persona, which takes her Glass Cannon traits even further. Dark Phoenix has even stronger and more elaborate attacks, but she has the same amount of health as vanilla Phoenix, which also constantly drains as long as she's on point.
    • Zero. If he even lands a single hit on you, prepared to be trapped in a long and damaging combo, ending with a super move. On the other hand, he has some of the lowest health in the game and can be taken out with a few hard hits or combos.
    • Magneto is capable of some of the best offense in the series with insane speed and mix-ups, has an incredibly useful projectile, and can deal massive damage even if you aren't willing to use any parts of your hyper meter. He barely has more bulk than Zero or Akuma, meaning that he himself can be taken out very quickly if one of his more unsafe options is countered.
  • Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite:
    • Zero has relatively low health, but is still considered one of the most devastating characters in the entire game.
  • Melty Blood: Tohno Akiha, in her Inverted form (dubbed Akiha Vermilion) has the most damaging set of moves in the game, but the lowest defense. With her in a match, you can expect a round to end in two or three combos.
  • Mortal Kombat: Deception's Shujinko could acquire moves from multiple characters in the game, giving him the most moves out of everyone else by the time you got them all. The downside is, he has lower defense than most characters.
  • M.U.G.E.N:
    • Light Yagami: His main attack is to write your name in the Death Note, which kills you. However, he can only take 3-4 hits before dying.
    • Space Invader: Perhaps the ultimate example — its Disintegrator Ray kills the enemy, but the Invader dies in one hit.
    • Daveybird has high strength, and lots of easy-to-execute and powerful moves, like his hadoukens and knee-punch-kick combo, but has low health, and is easy to KO if you know fast combos.
  • Newgrounds Rumble has the titular character of Salad Fingers among the cast. Not only do his attacks cause massive damage, but his very long limbs give him amazing reach. On the flipside, he moves really slowly and can't take much punishment.
  • Punch-Out!!: King Hippo is a weird example, since unlike most examples of this trope he's a Fat Bastard, and when he hits, he hits hard. However, his huge size also means he absolutely cannot get back up unlike every other opponent, so once he's down, Mac wins.
  • Super Street Fighter IV: Makoto has slightly lower than average health and defense, but much better than Akuma or Seth, and in the second highest tier for base damage. But what makes her this is her potential; she has some, if not the best, mix-ups and mind-games out of anyone, and her ultra's and supers are the highest damaging in the game, with a maximum potential of near twice the lowest damage and a good 30% higher than the closest competitor. She dropped from top 5 easy to near bottom, if not actual bottom, due to parrying being removed, as this provided her single real defensive capability, but she still has the ability to cause more damage in a shorter space of time than any other character.
    • Seth from the same game has also been turned into this when playable, which is a necessity considering what he usually is.
  • Super Smash Bros.:
    • Jigglypuff, particularly with regard to its lethal Rest attack, which is a near-guaranteed One Hit KO if it connects and leaves it incredibly vulnerable if it doesn't. It also has incredible aerial mobility and surprisingly long reach, allowing for practically risk-free edgeguarding (particularly in Melee) and "Wall of Pain" combos. To add to Jigglypuff's Glass Cannon status, it is the lightest character in the cast for each of its appearances, and having its shield broken sends it flying off the top of the screen at incredible speed, resulting in an instant KO if there's no ceiling to stop it.
    • Similarly, Kirby has powerful moves like Stone and Hammer, and can pick up some of the most powerful moves in the game (Falcon Punch, Giant Punch, and Charge Shot) but is barely heavier than Jigglypuff.
    • Mr. Game & Watch from the same series is almost as light (he's a two-dimensional character resembling an old LCD display) but has among the strongest smashes in the game and Judge 9, an RNG move that can KO extremely early.
    • Fox in Melee qualifies. He is extremely fast, and some of his moves, particularly his up Smash and up aerial deal devastating knockback, and his down special can kill the opponent very early when used offstage to hit a recovering fighter. He is also one of the lightest characters in the game, while being vulnerable to highly damaging combos due to falling very quickly. Coupled with the fact that many of his techniques require very precise execution, Fox can often die from a single mistake, and such mistakes are prone to happening more often than for other characters.
    • Falco in Melee is in a similar situation to Fox. He has potentially the most damaging and consistent combos in the game, with the potential to zero-to-death multiple characters, while also having powerful Smash attacks and a long-lasting down air that has solid range and spikes the opponent downwards. On top of this, he has a very quick projectile which can make it very difficult for opponents to hit him and sometimes even create offensive openings. However, he is only slightly heavier than Fox, and his offstage recovery moves have short range, causing him to die even earlier than his counterpart. He is also significantly slower than Fox, giving him fewer escape options in certain situations.
    • In Brawl, Zelda has become buffed to where she has downright deadly kicks and a powerful long-range attack, but is still easily tossed around. Also watch out for beetles as they take her faster than most others.
    • In Melee, Mewtwo is powerful, but lighter than his size or speed would imply. He is also quite a large target despite his light weight, making him easy to hit in conjunction with his unexpectedly slow movement.
    • In for 3DS / Wii U, Little Mac has some of the best mobility and some of the strongest and fastest attacks on the ground, but doesn't stand a chance in the air or offstage, which makes him easy to KO once his feet are off the ground (assuming there are Bottomless Pits — the few stages that don't have them make him a Lightning Bruiser instead).
    • Mewtwo returns in for 3DS / Wii U even more powerful than his Melee counterpart, but is way more frail, almost as much as Jigglypuff. Fortunately, he also received a significant increase in speed, making him a much more threatening opponent than before.
    • Roy was reworked into this in for 3DS / Wii U — he may look like a Lightning Bruiser at first glance, but his high weight and fall speed make him an easy target for combos, and his short recovery doesn't help him either. However, his powerful sweetspots and combo game allow him to KO his opponents just as easily as they can KO him.
    • In for 3DS / Wii U, character customization has been added, which can make virtually anybody a glass cannon. If you put on three pieces of attack-increasing equipment on a character, they'll deal tons more damage, but also take tons more damage.
    • In Ultimate, Pichu went from a Joke Character to a Lethal Joke Character, fitting comfortably in the Glass Cannon mold. It improves its mobility, damage, knockback, and sheer speed of its attacks from its Melee incarnation, making it much stronger and faster, capable of doing a ton of damage very quickly and scoring KOs at relatively low percents. To balance this out, Pichu is the lightest character in the game, and has a self-damage mechanic that causes a bit of damage to itself every time it uses an electric attack, which is more than half of its arsenal. This makes Pichu outright terrible defensively, leaving Pichu as a character that both deals and receives a ton of KOs.
    • Simon and Richter Belmont are in a similar boat to Little Mac, though with the melee focus changed to zoning. They can put out an absolute fusillade of highly-damaging projectiles and top it off with some of the longest-reaching standard attacks in the game, but they're also fast-fallers, slow in the air and on the ground, and poor at recovering. If a fight starts to turn against them, they don't have many options.
    • Ridley has access to some of the most damaging attacks in the game (with Skewer outdamaging some Final Smashes), along with great reach, speed, and combo potential, but he combines being the largest character with having by far the lowest weight of the various giant characters. Similar to Fox, he tends to either shred opponents in seconds, or end up as combo food.
    • Lucario's attacks become more powerful the higher his damage percentage, effectively becoming a stronger cannon the glassier he gets.
    • Rosalina and her Luma hit pretty hard; her neutral B in particular, which sends her Luma flying towards the opponent, can KO at surprisingly low percentages. However, Rosalina's constant floating and tall hitbox make her fragile if the enemy isn't kept under control by her Puppet Fighter mindgames.
  • The fighter Prizm from Tattoo Assassins is this. He has powerful moves that come out lighting quick and as a sub-boss, he animates at double speed, meaning he can be knocked away, get up and be back to launching attacks before your character even finishes their attack animation. The downside? He can take four hits and ONLY four hits before he shatters.
  • Black Battler in Umineko: Golden Fantasia is capable of dishing out a lot of damage, at the expense of having the lowest health out of the roster.
  • Viper II and its descendants from Virtual-ON can count as this, too. Their models are basically designed to have more powerful weapons and greater speed than Temjin with the downside of having a paper-thin armor.
    • Some games in the series give Raiden, which normally sits on the Mighty Glacier end of the scale, the ability to blow off all its armor. This turns it into a Lightning Bruiser, but now it has all the defense of well, a mech that just blew off all its armor.

    First-Person Shooter 
  • Borderlands:
    • Of the four player characters, Mordecai the Hunter is this trope. He's the only character who doesn't get a skill to boost his health or shields, the only character who doesn't get a skill that regenerates shields, and his health recovery skills require an enemy to take advantage of. On the other hand, his Bloodwing can tear through several high-level enemies when leveled up and he specializes in critical hits, sniper rifles, and revolvers.
    • In the sequel, the sniper Zer0 is once again the lightest in terms of defenses of the four starting hunters (and probably even including two downloadable ones), but has some of the most potent damage output, including his Sniping skill tree where it's possible to stack an absurd number of attack bonuses with his sniper rifle. Drop the buff or fail to score a Critical Hit, however, and he's toast. While he does have effects that increase health and allow regenerating shields, the latter only applies for a few seconds after he kills an enemy; against a lone tough boss, once it runs out of turret add-ons or whatever, you will do an awful lot of hiding and running and no small amount of praying.
    • The downloadable Psycho Vault Hunter, Krieg, is also like this, as he can put out horrific amounts of melee damage in short order while rushing enemies at high speed, but a lot of his skills require him to take hits to his shield's abilities (and thus his survivability) or set himself on fire to gain them.
  • Destiny:
    • The franchise has had two enemies that qualify as this. The first enemy type are the Hive's Cursed Thralls. They were slow moving enemies that if they got to close to you, would explode could deal massive amounts of damage to you if not outright kill you.
    • The second enemy type like this are the Scorn's Screebs. Unlike cursed thralls these guys were very fast and crawled on all fours over to you Just like the cursed thralls, they are just as deadly if not even more so than them. In the grandmaster version of the Hallowed Lair, when Stalkers died they spawned a miniature version of the screebs. These guys died in one shot but are just as deadly as normal screebs.
  • Doom:
    • Doom II:
      • The Chaingun Commando can bleed through a player's health in seconds but has only a little more health than the other zombie types, capable of being taken out with a single shotgun blast.
      • The Revenant has relatively little health for a demon of its level but it hits very hard and can even fire homing missiles.
    • In Doom 64, the Lost Soul is much more vicious, attacking constantly as if the game is set to Nightmare!, but a single shotgun blast will kill them thanks to having their health reduced to half of their original incarnation. The Pain Elemental summons them two at a time, making said Elemental a priority target to prevent yourself from being killed quickly by a swarm of souls.
    • In Doom³, the Tentacle Commando is difficult to shake off, but barely has more health than other regular zombie enemies.
    • Doom (2016):
      • The Doom Slayer himself is subject to this. He has the characteristics of a Lightning Bruiser (more agile than his enemies and hits like a tank) but is not resilient to damage so it doesn't take a lot of effort on the part of the demons to fell him if they can get a good hit in (particularly the huge hits of the Hell Knight can absolutely wreck your health meter even if you upgrade it). Furthermore there is no Regenerating Health so the only way to stay alive in a frantic fight is by slaying demons and collecting health from their corpses (preferably with Glory Kills, as those drop more health than just shooting a demon to death).
      • Lost Souls come back as enemies: they are as frail and quick as they were in original games, but far more destructive, their only move consisting of an explosive Suicide Attack.
  • In addition to being a Fragile Speedster, the Night Hunter from Dying Light can dish out one-hit kills with its pounce attack. However, when its pounce attack is disabled by a UV flashlight, it's extremely easy to kill with any weapon capable of doing a decent level of damage. This makes stealth the predominate strategy for the player who controls the Hunter, because there's very little that can be done to stop a pounce attack from out of nowhere, particularly if it's preceded by anti-UV spit.
  • Kerillian the Wood Elf from The End Times: Vermintide specializes in picking off far-away targets of opportunity with her bows, at the cost of her own fragility. This is emphasized further in the second game: as a Waystalker she is able to low a cluster of Elites with a single Trueshot Volley, and as a Shade she specializes in backstabbing beefy targets to death with insane burst damage (even Chaos Warriors die in seconds if a good Shade is allowed to focus them down)... but she has the lowest HP of any of the heroes. Her Haidmaiden career makes her a little sturdier, but she relies on dodging and poking with a longer weapon like a spear or greatsword to survive rather than simply tanking blows away like Bardin or Kruber.
    • Not the case with her Handmaiden career from the second game. Handmaiden is a dodge tank/support version of Kerillian with higher HP, the opportunity to pile on block cost reduction buffs (up to 90%; blocking an overhead swing from a Chaos Warrior only costs one stamina shield), wider dodging sidesteps, and a special dash. A well-played Handmaiden will practically never go down, and will likely bring an otherwise-doomed run Back from the Brink.
    • Also from the second game, Bardin the Dwarf's premium Outcast Engineer career. Four words: Steam. Powered. Gatling. Gun. It's a riot to use, able to mow down hordes of enemies down like it's World War I and also melt monsters' HP bars down to nothing in seconds flat. However his ability to take any damage in return is woeful (though can be partially mitigated by the Barkskin charm trait and the Ablative Armour talent or by giving him a melee option with a shield), and what's worse he has no ability to clear space around him or escape if he is surrounded; he is entirely dependent on his teammates defending him. Which is often why you see the Outcast Engineer in the rock-bottom of career tier lists - Vermintide is a game where making sure that you survive is a much more important consideration than making sure your enemies do not.
  • Half-Life: in prototypes the headcrab enemy was capable of one-shotting the player with a good hit but would die in a handful of pistol shots. In the finished product, they're more The Goomba.
  • Halo franchise:
    • Hunters were like this in the original Halo: Combat Evolved. They are the most powerful enemies thanks to their cannon being the strongest enemy "gun" (even if their accuracy leaves something to be desired). However, aiming for the orange spot is an easy way to kill them, and thanks to a programming error, it's a one hit kill with any headshot weapon. However, they avert this in all the subsequent games, to the point where they're now Lightning Bruiser Bosses in Mook Clothing.
    • Jackal Snipers are very deadly, but can be killed fast if you can find their hiding spots.
    • The Scorpion from Halo: Reach onward. Its cannon pretty much slaughters the opposing team with lethal effect... but sneaky foes can quickly get up close to board it, at which point they need only a few punches or just one measly grenade to easily take it down.
    • In Halo Infinite, the Skimmers are reptilians armed with a Jump Pack. While their weapons often pack a punch, they usually go down with one or two hits from a standard weapon.
  • Left 4 Dead:
    • The Hunter is a Fragile Speedster, and if a skilled player can land a pounce from maximum range he can hit like a ton of bricks with claws. Not to mention that it's a guaranteed kill if the target you pounce on can't be rescued by their allies.
    • The Boomer qualifies too. It's even more fragile than the Hunter, but a skillful puke can nail all four survivors and indirectly do far more for the Infected team.
    • And in Left 4 Dead 2, the Spitter has the second-lowest health of the Special Infected after the Boomer, but if someone's stupid/experimental enough to stand in a puddle of the goo from start to finish, they will be almost downed on Normal difficulty, and being spat at during a horde is no fun at all.
  • Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi: Shadow Vampires are one of the strongest enemies in the game damage-wise, but go down in one zap from the Crucifix. To a lesser extent, Ghouls can dish out far more than they can take.
  • ORION: Prelude lets the player invoke this by customizing the game with prehistoric mode; They can set the dinosaurs to have 25% of their normal health, but 400% normal damage.
  • Paladins:
    • Flank champions can do a lot of close range burst damage, but are the most fragile champions. The exception is Buck, who has higher health than most champions barring Front Line champs.
    • Tyra is a Damage champion who a cross between a Glass Cannon and Mighty Glacier. She has average health and is one of the few champions who lacks a mobility skill, but can do a lot of damage with her auto rifle, grenade launcher, and fire bomb.
  • Team Fortress 2:
    • The Scout, while also being a Fragile Speedster, can inflict some serious ouch with his Sawed-Off Shotgun. His default Scattergun can fire off about once every 0.7 seconds and can inflict up to 105 units of damage at point blank range, which is a lot of damage for a game where the characters have health pools between 125 and 300 units. However, the Scout himself is in the former category, to the point that most classes can kill him in two good shots. His unlockables tend to enhance this status: the Force-a-Nature lets you fire two shots in half a second, but has little use in prolonged combat. The Sandman lets you stun an enemy to disable their weapon, but significantly reduces your health. Finally, the Crit-a-Cola makes all damage you inflict and take mini-crits.
    • There's also the Spy, who relies on cloak and disguise to get past the enemy, and can be killed by stray bullets. Successfully getting behind an opponent, however, yields instant death. Speed, distance and stealth, all accounted for. The Ambassador makes him able to deal serious damage in head-shots, just don't expect to be a tank with it.
    • The Sniper, for much the same reason as the Spy. Snipers have low health, fairly weak close-to-mid range attack options (unless you're dealing with a Sniper using the Huntsman), and are exceedingly prone to getting backstabbed while scoped. However, a single charged headshot is enough to kill just about anythingnote , and charged body shots are still exceedingly painful, capable of one-shotting five of the nine classes in the game. A properly positioned Sniper can be just as devastating to an attacking team as a sentry.
      • Snipers are also more or less a Critical Hit Class, due to the reliability of melee at the ranges Snipers tend to be engaged by their enemies and the game's crit mechanics heavily favoring Snipers. A good melee swing from a kukri will put down the majority of classes. The Bushwacka knife makes this even more obvious, as it provides a damage vulnerability when drawn in exchange for turning mini-crits into critical hits. When you consider that Snipers have multiple ways of inducing mini-crits, a Sniper with the Bushwacka can be an incredibly nasty close-range fighter... at the price of having a pretty good chance of dying to a single meatshot.
    • The Kritzkrieg Medigun is based on this, swapping out the invincibility of the standard Medigun charge for free critical hits. This means that even comparatively noncombative classes can potentially one-shot enemies, and a Soldier or Heavy can pretty much wipe out an entire team. This comes at the cost of having no more health than a standard overhealed Medic patient, and the Medic himself has no enhanced protection whatsoever, meaning a Kritzkrieg rampage can be quickly ended. Ironically, it's mostly favored for defensive teams, since the sentry guns that are a vital cog in stopping pushes also happen to be completely immune to critical hits.
    • The "Trolldier" playstyle is based on abusing the Market Gardener weapon, which deals 195 damage if the Soldier is performing a Rocket Jump, allowing the Soldier to kill most classes in one swing. This is also usually combined with the Rocket Jumper weapon, which negates rocket damage and enables the Soldier to be rocket jumping more or less constantly, making them absurdly mobile and hard to see coming. However, if the Soldier misses his shovel swing or gets attacked on the ground, then he tends to be very easy prey, due to him having nothing but a mediocre melee weapon to protect himself with.
  • V1 from ULTRAKILL has a whole slew of weapons and items to rip a bloody swathe through the swarms of enemies that get sent at them; including a railcannon, a shotgun that doubles as a grenade launcher, an arm that doubles as a Pile Bunker, and more. That said, they have a measly health-pool of 100, and staying in one spot too long is a surefire way to see that drop straight down to zero. As with DOOM, there is no regenerating health, and this time around the only way to regain health is to literally bathe in the blood of your enemies before it hits the ground, meaning that exercising No Range Like Point-Blank Range is often a requirement to staying alive.

    Flight Sim 
  • The Ace Combat's games' use of the F-5 Tiger amounts to this; this also applies to the "Mobius One" version (it's DownLoadable Content) of the F-22 Raptor in Ace Combat 6: dramatically reduced Defense in return for maxed out Mobility, Speed, and Air-to-Air ratings. It also applies to the Yellow 13 version of the Su-33 in that same game. In Ace mode all planes are One Hit Point Wonders to a missile hit (except in X where some planes have enough defence to survive one more), so the question is not how strong the glass, as in lower difficulties, but how much cannon and Speedster/Lightning it's packing.
  • A few ships in FreeSpace fall into this. Ironically, it's most apparent in the ship design of the Omnicidal Maniac Shivans, who build their ships with all the firepower in front. They have much more effective weapons, but a ship to the sides or behind will tear them apart. This is not always an exploitable weakness; destroyers like the Ravana can jump in and shred their targets in seconds, leaving it up to the reinforcements to exploit its blind spots, assuming it doesn't just leave. Perhaps the most glass cannon-est of all things in the series is the GTSG Mjolnir — a sentry gun (a frame with gun turrets attached to it, easily destroyed in a few shots) with the guns replaced with a beam cannon, the most powerful weapon the GTVA has.
  • Project Wingman: Glass Cannon is among one of the game modifiers. Enabling it for a mission will increase damage towards enemies by 2.5x, but you receive 5x damage back.
  • The X-Universe has M5 light fighters. They're mostly meant as scout ships and as such carry almost uselessly weak lasers, but there are a few that can mount respectably powerful missiles. As you can shoot rather a lot of them in a short time, this can cause a tiny M5 to actually present a credible threat to even such things as M3 heavy fighters... as long as the enemy ship can't land a shot on them. This is easier to say than to do, due to the M5s' rather impressive speed, but if something does hit them they tend to disintegrate like they were made of paper. The Split Dynasty's design philosophy is part glass cannon, part Fragile Speedster; their ships are almost always the fastest and most well armed in their class — even their freighter has mounting points for weapons — but they mount significantly less shields and armor than comparable ships.

    Idle 
  • Armory & Machine 2:
    • Glitched JrBots in the Tower area have only 5 HP meaning that they die in one hit to your weakest attack Blast, but their only attack comes out quickly and deals a whopping 50 damage to your 100 max HP. Whether you survive unscathed or take a massive chunk of damage depends on how fast your reflexes are.
    • Several of the later Timebomb enemies are this. While all Timebomb enemies have 10 HP (barring the Reinforced Timebomb) and go down in two hits from your weakest attack, the later ones deal 50 damage to you if they blow up before they're killed.

    MMO 
  • Blade & Soul:
    • Force Masters can dish out high amounts of sustained damage and dodge attacks thanks to their highly mobile skills but has low defense and no protection against melee attacks. That said, they also have access to party skills that protect the whole party and themselves from damage for a few seconds.
    • Warlocks have high burst capabilities and an offensive buff that can leave enemies dead within seconds, at the cost of low defense and slow mobility. Killing their thralls can prevent them from using the buff and deprive them of one escape skill.
    • Gunslingers has the highest mobility of all classes and either huge burst capabilities that can deal millions of damage or high sustained damage depending on the build. This is offset by their abysmal defense and forcing them to use their one escape skill will make them a sitting duck for combos.
  • The Blaster archetype in City of Heroes is built around this trope. They have the highest damage output of all the archetypes. However, not only do they share the lowest rate of hit-point gain with a couple of other Squishy Wizard Archetypes, but whereas every other Archetype has at least one power set devoted to defending themselves, boosting their natural abilities, hindering enemy attacks, or summoning pets to protect them, the Blaster's power sets are Ranged Attacks and... Melee Attacks. Not for nothing do Blasters refer to themselves as the 'Floor Inspector's Union' — a blaster expects to get defeated (and they spend a lot of time face down looking at the floor) at least once per mission.
  • EVE Online:
    • Stealth Bombers, the Tech 2 missile frigates. A half-dozen can either take out a Battleship in a few torpedo volleys, or launch one volley of bombs and wipe out an entire fleet of cruisers; but they will die if you so much as look at them funny. Their only defenses are their Covert Ops Cloaking Device (allowing them to warp while cloaked), the greatly extended range of their torpedoes, and their tiny size making them difficult to hit (especially with battleship-sized weapons).
    • Tech 1 Destroyers. 7-8 frigate-sized guns, but almost no other equipment. The guns' small size lets them track and hit almost any target, and between the number of guns and the ships' very low price tag, destroyers are very popular for suicidal ambushes on valuable targets (like freighters).
    • Tier-3 "Attack" Battlecruisers are designed around this trope: 8 battleship-size guns, even exceeding the firepower of most actual battleships, but paper thin defenses. In combat, they'll be priority targets because their massive firepower can be neutralized quickly, but if a squad of attack battlecruisers warps into a fleet fight while the enemy's focus is elsewhere...
    • Any combat ship can be made into this by equipping it with Polarized weapons, which have much higher rates of fire than other weapons of their type, but negate all of their ship's damage resistances. (And in a game where the most durable ships can have over 90% damage resistance, that can be a problem.)
  • Final Fantasy XI:
    • Black Mages were, at certain points in the meta, the absolute best at dealing massive levels of spike damage by "Magic Bursting" off of Skill Chains. But they have low HP, no good armor, no real defensive abilities, and their only natural HP recovery mechanic was the Drain spell. Which Dark Knight was actually better at using than Black Mage.
    • The Thief class can hit large spike damage totals, and has the defensive properties of damp cardboard. But gets around it by its gimmick in the meta (besides improving drop rates) being using the Trick Attack ability to pin all of the enmity from one of its spikes onto whoever is standing between the Thief and the mob. Being made of glass isn't a big issue if the tank keeps hate, after all.
    • Ninja was designed by the Devs as glass cannon, but the player base turned it into a tank, of all things. It didn't have a great HP total, and the armor available to it was mostly what was available to Monk (IE Stuff with low defense and no Vitality). Anything that hit the Ninja was likely to destroy the Ninja. But it had an Evasion skill second to only Thief, and high agility, and the "Utsusemi" ninjutsu spell that would provide "shadows" that would block any physical attack before disappearing. While very vulnerable to Area of Effect attacks (which would usually simultaneously wipe out all shadows and hit the Ninja for the full effect), it could reliably tank many common EXP targets, as they were chosen for EXP targets because they lacked such dangerous attacks in the first place.
  • Final Fantasy XIV has "Selfish DPS" for each of the job types; jobs that bring no utility and minimal self-survival tools but make up for it with downright excessive amounts of damage.
    • Black Mage returns and once again proves itself as the Glass Cannon of Final Fantasy. They're almost completely immobile and have a single, weak shield spell on a long cooldown, but if they find a place they can freely cast without having to move to dodge an enemy's attacks, they can quickly prove to do excessive amounts of damage on single enemies and in large groups.
    • Samurai is the melee equivalent of Black Mage, Samurai have bar none the highest damaging attacks in the game in the form of their long cooldown skills and their Iajutsu abilities, and can attack very quickly, but the only thing they have in the way of defense is a buff that only lasts 3 seconds, only reduces damage taken by the next attack and only by 10%, and fills their Kenki gauge by 10 when triggered.
    • And lastly, we have Shadowbringers' take on Machinist. Like the other two, Machinist does the highest damage of the ranged physical DPS, but unlike the two above they have no inbuilt way of reducing damage besides tactician — a party-wide damage reduction buff that is only cosmetically different from damage reduction skills shared by the other ranged physical jobs — so they have to put their ability to stay at a range and attack while moving freely with instant attacks to avoid getting damaged to begin with.
    • Endwalker turned the Dark Knight into the tank equivalent of a Glass Cannon; while its unique mitigation skills are more situational than the other tanks' and it has the weakest self-sustain, its plethora of long-cooldown abilities give it insane burst DPS that rivals many dedicated DPS jobs.
  • Kingdom of Loathing:
    • The Pastamancer and Sauceror classes in Kingdom of Loathing. Their highest-level spells allow them to hit MUCH higher damage totals than any other classes (except maybe a Seal Clubber at super-high levels), especially since they can use Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors to REALLY lay down the pain. However, they also have naturally low Muscle and Moxie, so they're easy to hit and won't take much punishment before getting beaten up. Saucerors outgrow this by midpoint in development and become Stone Walls, but Pastamancers' offense becomes ever more powerful without any of the defenses a Sauceror acquires.
    • After the class revamps, Saucerors actually lean more towards Glass Cannon than Pastamancers. On one hand, Pastamancers have more practical healing skills than Saucerors do, and if they summon an Undead Elbow Macaroni, their base Muscle will be set equal to their Mysticality. They also have a skill that grants a buff that reduces physical damage by a percentage. Saucerors, on the other hand, have healing skills that fall off later in the game, plus they have a skill that reduces max HP for more max MP.
    • The Avatar of Jarlsberg special challenge path is an even bigger glass cannon. It gives you almost no defensive or self-healing ability (unless you invest in the Mr. Store item "Jarlsberg's pan"), but it does give you access to some of the most damaging spells in the game.
  • The Divine Herald, Void Walker and Revenant from Nexus Clash are all different flavors of this trope. They do massive damage, have few defenses, and are amazingly good at hunting their prey. Even some of the weakest characters in the game have a good shot at killing one — if they can catch one.
  • Depending on your character build in The Secret World, a DPS-oriented character can have less than 1/5th the resiliency of an equivalently equipped tank while dishing out over 5 times the damage, and of course vice versa, making for a huge range of character statistics. Given the flexibility and lack of classes, playing with either extreme would be an example of voluntary Min-Maxing.
  • Star Trek Online:
    • Escort-type ships, including Birds of Prey and Warbirds. Incredible speed and turn rate, built for firepower in mind, can mount the spike-damage-inducing Dual Cannons, but has the lowest shield modifiers (x.9 for Escorts and Warbirds, x~.82 for BoP) and while Science Vessels have the lowest hullpoints, they make up for it with their stupidly high shield modifiers.
  • The Consular's glass cannon status can be subverted in Star Wars: The Old Republic where the Shadow sub-class of Consular can be specced as a Mitigation Tank. That being said, they are still the "squishiest" of the tank specs, relying heavily on shields. However, they are able to pull more DPS and hold more aggro than a Jedi Guardian or Vanguard Trooper in addition to using stealth and stuns, making them Difficult, but Awesome.
    • Also, prior to version 4.0 (which did away with set character roles), the Consular's companion and padawan Nadia Grell was this trope. The most powerful telekinetic the Order had seen in a generation, able to blow a squad of attackers across the room...that looks like a strong wind would knock her over. If you saw a Consular with Nadia in tow, they were usually endgame players with good gear, as Nadia needed a lot of healing from a Sage or a Shadow to draw aggro away from her or she'd go down quickly.
    • The Sentinels, a specialization of the Jedi Knight class, also counts. They have fantastic DPS thanks to their twin lightsabers but have no healing abilities, few damage reduction cooldowns and little crowd control. To make matters worse, their class quest seems to have been designed more for the Jedi Guardian advanced class, which can tank.
  • Wizard101: The Storm and Fire schools (especially the former) have the most powerful attacks in the game, but also suffer from low health and accuracy.
  • World of Tanks:
    • SPGs are glass cannons to an absurd degree. They can blow you to smithereens from the other side of the battlefield, but, if you can get close enough to them, you'll find that shells go through them like tissue paper.
    • Tank Destroyers, to a lesser degree, are also this. For example, the ISU-152 and Object 704, with their top gun can kill a great many tanks in one shot, and any tank in, at most, 4, but they have armor that is paper thin, and will not last if they're caught alone.
  • World of Warcraft:
    • For players, essentially every damage dealer. Plate wearing damage dealers are slightly more durable due to heavy armor, but most raid bosses are noted for their ability to kill anything except a tank in under two seconds.
    • There's an NPC that has an exaggerated version of this trait for some reason: Belgork, an orc commander and rare elite monster in Tanaan Jungle. His health goes down much faster than other rares' when you're bringing him down, but don't miss the fact that he's killing you just as fast.
  • World of Warships has destroyers, which are (generally speaking) small, thinly armored, nimble, and packing very light surface weaponry. They are simply not made for a straight up gun battle. Typically this would qualify them for the Fragile Speedster classification...except that most destroyers can lay down a lot of hurt with their torpedoes, such that a single destroyer with full torpedo tubes can play merry hell against vulnerable, unsupported, or unaware targets, such as carriers and battleships.

    MOBA 
  • Agility carry heroes from Defense of the Ancients and DOTA 2 partially fit this archetype. Their primary and damage-determining attribute, Agility, also affects attack speed, thus making them good DPS dealers. The rub comes in the tradeoff on Strength, which affects health maximum and regeneration. However, Agility under the WC3 engine also affects physical damage-reducing armor, thus lessening the "glassiness" slightly.
    • Intelligence heroes, especially nukers, often fall along these lines. A lot of them — such as Lina, Lion, Rylai, or Kaldr have abilities that deal tremendous damage, allowing them to stay relevant through the game. On the other hand, if a carry or semicarry gets close enough to start hitting them, they melt.
    • There are a few heroes who, while not inherently glass cannons, are often built as such for some reason or another. On these heroes, the item Mask of Madness is ideal — it's incredibly cheap for what it does, granting a temporary 100 attack speed on a Cool Down (for reference, the only other item that gives around that much attack speed costs over twice as much and does almost nothing else), as well as a nice movement speed boost, but makes you take an extra 30% damage while active.
  • In Heroes of Newerth Puppet Master fits this to a T. 2 of his skills are essentially extra DPS and he has low strength growth. What makes him different than the Agility carries is that their Agil growth boosts their armor significantly; being an Intelligence hero, Puppet gets the short end of that one.
  • This is essentially the point of Assassin characters in Heroes of the Storm, powerful warrior units that can melt an enemy in a few blows or outright ruin a character's abilities, but get knocked to the ground with a strong wind.
    • Li-Ming has a Talent that references this trope by name. It gives her a passive boost to all her ability damage, but reduces her health pool to that of a character several levels lower.
  • League of Legends: "Attack Damage Carries" (or "ADC") are this type of character. Ashe, Vayne and Tristana are exemplars of the trope, being among the frailest characters in the game, but capable of fearsome amounts of damage when they get their items.
    • Assassin-type characters, also known as "AD jungles" are basically melee ADCs, capable of causing insane damage but their defense is made of paper. Their purpose is to ambush (gank) the enemy and unleash as much damage as they can before they die. Examples of this type of character include Master Yi, Fiora and Akali.
    • While normally fairly resilient, homicidal Yordle cavalryman Kled turns into this as soon as his Cowardly Lion steed, Skaarl, runs away. He's extremely slow unless charging directly at the enemy, he loses access to half his abilities, and, most devastatingly, all his HP boosts are applied to Skaarl's bar, not his separate personal HP — making him increasingly vulnerable on foot as the game goes on. However, the abilities he does have are 1) a high-damage Short-Range Shotgun and 2) the ability to periodically go into a berserk stabbing frenzy. Do not assume that Kled isn't going to take off a decent chunk of your HP just because he's super fragile, and if he can do enough damage, he'll get Skaarl back and pick up some more health out of nowhere.
    • Some mage champions have really nasty damage outputs but low health and mobility. The clearest example of this is Veigar, who is slow and squishy, but has an infinitely stackable bonus to his ability power whenever he kills something with the appropriate spell, meaning that if he gets a shot off in the late-game, even a tank with a high magic resist is going to see their health go down noticeably, and a more fragile character like a marksman is going to disappear instantly — which will slightly increase his ability power.

    Puzzle 
  • Meteos:
    • Globin falls into this category, especially in Meteos Wars. It has the highest garbage block output of any planet in the game, and it builds up its Planet Impact meter the fastest. Skilled Globin players will flood their opponents with garbage blocks while throwing frequent Armageddon blocks at them. However, Globin gets a garbage block multiplier for itself too, meaning it has to take larger amounts than other planets, and should the match go on for too long, Globin also has a very short grace period between when the playfield fills up and when the game declares a loss for Globin.
    • Darthvega plays like most of the other planets in most aspects, except it has an easier time clearing out blocks. To compensate for this, Darthvega has the absolute shortest grace period between a filled playfield and when it loses, even more so than Globin, requiring the Darthvega player to win the round before the opponents get strong enough to inevitably defeat them.
    • Different planets have different block colors. Planet Meteo, in Meteos Wars, has the 7 rarest colors, alowing Meteo to make use of the mechanic in which garbage blocks eventually turn back into usable blocks — but of the planet they came from. Meteo also has the widest playfield in the game at 11 columns, so launching attacks is devastating for anyone who has to receive it. At the same time, these traits make it hard for Meteo to survive, as having this many colors limits your ability to match same-color blocks, and having a playfield this wide means you have to keep track of more blocks than most other planets.
  • The Wizard class in Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords. Players will spend their first twenty or so levels getting punked by enemies the other classes could take out with little trouble, thanks to the Wizard's low physical attacking strength and lower hit points (and lack of the Druid's defensive spells). Aggravated depending on which version you're playing (The PC version has stricter recharge times on spells like Fireball, which is spammable in the DS and 360 versions). By the time the Level Cap is hit, the attack and life points are still low, but the player will have an array of spells capable to taking out most enemies in five rounds or less.

    Racing Games 
  • Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled has a similar example to the "drift and turbo" characters from Mario Kart Wii below with the mechanically unusual drift class: they have the second-to-best top speed, and a handling level that's actually useful for sharp turns and straight lines, as they are the most controllables characters in the game... while drifting. However, they have the worst acceleration for any class in the game, making any error fatal if you count on your momentum.
  • In F-Zero X and GX, the vehicles with maximum boost and low grip can drift more frequently, increasing the speed they gain by boosting this way. However, they still have to use a high quantity of energy to boost, making them more vulnerable to collisions.
  • Mario Kart has some examples of these too. These examples are varied, but their common points are a good top speed (at least above average) and weak defensive features like off-road:
    • In Super Mario Kart, Mario and Luigi have a good top speed and a decent handling, but only subpar acceleration, and while their middleweight makes them stronger at full speed, they're still vulnerable to heavyweights' attacks.
    • Mario Kart: Double Dash!!:
      • The Bullet Blaster (which, fittingly, looks like a Banzai Bill, the Giant missile Mook of the Super Mario Bros. franchise) is the lightest vehicle and the most vulnerable to off-road, but its top speed is comparable to the heaviest karts and it still gets great mini-turbos after drifts.
      • The Green Fire is a more moderate example, having the best top speed of middleweights, but average mini-turbos, weak acceleration and off-road, and being the second lightest vehicle of its league.
    • Mario Kart Wii has two kinds of "slow to start, hard to stop" vehicles, and both of them have lighter examples that fall in this category:
      • The lighter power vehiclesExamples are Strong and Skilled examples: they have the worst acceleration of their respective weight classes, coupled with awful off-road and handling stats, and their light weight makes them more vulnerable to heavier vehicles. However, they have the second-to-best top speed of their classes and most importantly, the best drift and mini-turbo stats of their weight classesnote . With this, Mini-Beast obtains a considerable push after a super mini-turbo; the bikes may not have this power, but both are sports bikes with inside drift, which allows them to take the sharpest turns and to gain a boost at the end.
      • The lighter speed vehiclesExamples are Unskilled, but Strong examples: while they have the best top speed of their respective weight and vehicle classes and a decent weightnote , they suck in every other categoryExplanation. While Jet Bubble and Blue Falcon are still balanced thanks to their lightweight privileges, Sneakster's inside drift isn't as useful as it can be for other bikes because of its pathetic handling, its average drift and the mediocre mini-turbo that comes out of it: it is a monster on automatic mode, but requires more preparation on manual to make sharp turns, preventing it to benefit the wheelie like the category above.
    • Mario Kart 7 works with a point system for characters and karts bodies, tires and gliders. While this theorically prevents these combinations to happen, you can still invoke this trope if you are creative enough. Exceptions occured, only land top speed is concerned.
      • The Soda Jet offers the second-to-best top speed and acceleration with a decent mini-turbo, handling and the best drift, but is extremely light and endures off-road more than the Bruiser.
      • B Dasher is heavier than Soda Jet and has the best top speed in the game, but can be considered this because it is as vulnerable to off-road, which is the Mighty Glaciers' privilege in this game. It is also slower to start and gives an average drift couple with a lame mini-turbo.
      • Slick tires are the Glass Cannon tires of this game: they give the best land top speed and the most precise drift with a decent mini-turbo and stability (and weight), but only a small acceleration, no handling and are the most vulnerable to off-road.
    • While Mario Kart 8 (Deluxe) prevents these combinations to happen for the same reasons than Mario Kart 7, you can still invoke this trope.
      • Taking the most powerful lightweights (Toad, Shy Guy or Larry Koopa) or the lightest middleweights (Cat Peach, Female Villager or Inkling Girl) with one of the vehicles below, Slim, Wood or Crimson Slim tires note  and your favorite glider turns them into Glass Cannons (even if they are still on the Fragile Speedster's side). This also works with heavyweights on similar vehicles with Roller tiresnote , even if they actually tend to be well-balanced.
      • Concerning the sole Nintendo Switch version, these examples have all have the second-to-best land top speed, a below average mini-turbo and the bikes have inside drift, a strong handicap considering how drift works in this game: Prancer, Sport Bike and Jet Bike only have an above nothing weight and below average acceleration; Sneeker, Gold Standard and the Master Cycle bike have a slightly better weight, but no traction, making them less stable; Blue Falcon and Splat Buggy correct the problem of traction and give slightly better acceleration than the previous examples, but are extremely light and have less handling, making them more imprecise.
      • This also works in another way if you simply take a speed combo for the light characters mentioned above, for example the Circuit Special on Slick tires for Toad: you become slighty faster than Mario with the Standard combination and remain as controllable (which is a strong advantage on 200cc), but you are more vulnerable to off-road because of the low acceleration, lack stability because of the low traction, and are still too light compared to the rest of the cast.
  • Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart: characters with overall high top speeds (either an eight or a nine in said stat) are some of the quickest racers in the game in the right hands, but their acceleration leaves a lot to be desired. One mistake or an incoming attack aimed right at them will send them much further back before they can catch up.
    Rail Shooter 
  • Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge has two playable mechs - the Falcon and the Tornado, with the latter playable after completing the game once. It has far more firepower than the Falcon, being able to store up to ten levels of energy rather than three, and can rapid-fire smaller bursts or release them all at once for massive damage. However, it also takes double damage from all enemy attacks.
    Real-Time Strategy 
  • A few examples in the Command & Conquer series:
    • Artillery cannons in general. While they're powerful, have great splash damage, and sometimes possess ridiculously long range, if as so much as a rocket soldier comes near, you can pretty much kiss it goodbye.
    • Red Alert 2 has the Prism Tank (which fires long-range Frickin' Laser Beams that can hit multiple units), V3 Rocket Launcher (which fires very long-ranged explosive rockets), Mirage Tank (two or three of these can take out the heavily armored Apocalypse Tank easily) and Tesla Tank (loads of damage and ignores line of sight requirements). However, two-three shots from the basic Soviet Rhino Tank will take any of these out.
    • Red Alert 3 pretty much continues the tradition; artillery units will get hammered even by weak infantry units. Most aerial units are pretty much glass cannons as well; Allied Century bombers can carpet bomb entire bases out of existence, WWII-style, Soviet Twin Blade helicopters pack a lot of firepower, especially in numbers (helps that they're somewhat inexpensive) and Japanese Rocket Angels are one of the few units that can devastate both air and ground/sea targets with equal aplomb, but all three types tend to suck in one-on-one battles against anti-air units.
    • The demolition truck from Red Alert and Red Alert 2. They're essentially nukes on wheels with a tendency to explode at the slightest provocation.
    • Grenadiers and flamethrowers can wreak devastation, especially in groups. However, when they die, they explode, often taking down everyone else around them.
    • The Obelisk of Nod in Tiberian Dawn and Tesla coils in Red Alert. Both can one-shot most basic enemies while heavily damaging others. However, they can only hit one target at a time, take a while to charge up and fire (which means the enemy can get in range and get out before it fires), and are about as durable as a house of cards.
    • Command & Conquer: Generals has units such as the Chinese Inferno and Nuke Cannons, the GLA Scud Launcher, Buggy and Bomb Truck and (debatably) the US Humvee, that have tremendously high attack power but are in mortal danger if so much as one or two basic infantry with rifles walk up to them (of course, they can always run over said infantry). The Nuke Cannon sometimes even says "Careful, she's fragile" when selected.
    • Aircraft in Generals are exceedingly fragile but deadly, engagements often ending in a Mutual Kill. The Aurora Bomber is essentially a one-use weapon that's invulnerable until it drops its high-damage bomb, after which its speed drops by half, making it an easy target.
    • The Generals Game Mod Rise of the Reds has General Hu Tan Mau, whose forces represent the Chinese Experimental Weapons Division. His forces have access to some gnarly weapons like flamethrower tanks, napalm, EMP weapons and nuclear munitions. His forces can inflict a lot of hurt, but when firepower is directed their way they tend to die quickly and rather messily.
  • In Company of Heroes the British have the Sherman Firefly, which has an extremely powerful 17-pounder gun but is relatively fragile compared to most other medium tanks. Tank destroyers, such as the Marder III, are also examples, as they typically feature powerful guns attached to a lightly armored chassis to improve mobility, as well as to reduce cost. The ultimate example is the American M18 "Hellcat" which has a powerful gun and paper thin armor, but is also one of the fastest units in the game.
    • Heck, the Panzer Elite, based on the Panzergrenadiers and the dreaded Waffen SS, are an entire faction built around this. Their options for armour support are limited, and unless they choose the Luftwaffe Tactics specialization, they cannot build any defensive structures save barbed wire and landmines. This is offset by a dizzying assortment of highly mobile light vehicles, ranging from the unarmed Kettenkrad to tank-hunter half-tracks and self-propelled artillery pieces, as well as small but very powerful squads of elite grenadier infantry.
  • In Crying Suns:
    • Cruisers are very powerful and can attack from range. They are also incredibly slow and completely defenseless against adjacent enemy squadrons, which will reduce a Cruiser to space debris in seconds.
    • The Geno-class battleship has the least health of all battleship types, and its core system gives its squadrons a 20% penalty to their maximum hit points. In exchange, those squadrons get a massive damage boost when attacking from stealth. The battleship also has an Invisibility Projector, letting squadrons which can't normally stealth get in on the action.
  • The Atreides Sonic Tank in Dune II, Dune 2000 and Emperor: Battle For Dune is incredibly powerful, but has practically paperboard armor.
  • All Artillery units in Empire at War and its expansion, although the Consortium's artillery at least has shields to let it last longer....
  • In Lords of the Realm 2, archer units consist of these. Since they have ranged weapons, they can dish out pain at a distance. But if you can force them into melee, their knives are pitifully weak, and they will often end up dying quickly.
  • The Eradicator unit from Machines: Wired For War can wipe out nearly any other unit but is weak, slow and probably will destroy itself in close combat.
  • In the Medieval II: Total War Game Mod Thera, there are whole factions based around this. The League of Privateers (an entire army of Pirates) field the most gunpowder units of any army in the mod, with riflemen, pistol cavalry and lots of cannon, but none of their units have shields and only their late-game melee have any armour, so they're very vulnerable to missiles themselves. The Gaelic Nations, meanwhile, are a melee-centred variation: as a stand-in for iron age Celtic Britain, they field a lot of barbarian troops who often go into battle with nothing but a large axe or sword, a coat of smelly warpaint and their courage, and certainly not any heavy armour, so while they can carve through even the heavily-armoured chivalric units of Avalon like a chainsaw through tapioca (especially on the charge), they can't take hits well in turn, and they drop like flies when shot at.
  • Myth: The Fallen Lords has Dwarves and Fetch who throw Molotov cocktails/shoot lightning from their fingertips respectively. Devastating to a horde of slow-moving units such as thrall, but it only takes a few arrows or sword blows to kill them.
  • Pikmin 2: The Bulborb Larvae can eat Pikmin in milliseconds, but they die from a single captain's punch.
  • Carriage Ballista in Rome: Total War expansion "Barbarian Invasion". Mobile artillery that can tear apart any unit but will die if an enemy as much as looks at it funny. Also prone to Friendly Fire problems.
    • Also from Rome, the chariots fielded by the likes of Carthage, Egypt or Britain combine this with Fragile Speedster. They'll roll through units of sword or axe infantry with no trouble at all and inflict very heavy casualties, but they won't survive long if they get bogged down in a dense formation of men or run into a phalanx or get shot at by missile troops.
  • Pyro's and Charnel's units in Sacrifice. Charnel's units are not only weak, they don't regain hitpoints over time.
  • On the whole, the Terrans are like this in StarcraftI. Their units can do fearsome damage, but they don't have nearly as many HP as most Protoss or even Zerg units. The Terrans don't have many units that have more than 150 HP, while the very first (combat) unit the Protoss builds comes with 160.
    • Spider Mines take this to the extreme. They're extremely frail but their detonation is extremely damaging dealing 125 damage to bulky targets, and it has considerable splash damage. However, the mine is destroyed by its own payload and if detected, they can be quickly removed.
  • Downplayed in StarCraft II thanks to the addition of the Marauder, a supporting anti-armor unit in a suit that is more than twice a durable as the Marine's. Still both can use still stimpacks at the expense of a portion of their health to boost their rate of fire (1.5X instead of 2X as compensation for their higher health). Additionally, Terran Factory builds now have the Thor to help shield their more vulnerable vehicles like the Siege Tank, but this vehicular compostion is very slow-moving and expensive in exchange for the combination of firepower and durability.
    • The Widow Mine is a successor of sorts to the Spider Mine. They're reusable this time around as they launch a deadly missile at their target and are much more durable. However, if tricked into firing on a low-value target, they're extremely vulnerable due to the very long cooldown while they ready another missile. If detected ahead of time, they're quick to destroy as well.
  • Destroyers in Stellaris are the Tier 2 level of starship so they get shot down relatively easy in interstellar fleet battles. On the other hand, they can equip an L-slot weapon right out of the gate, allowing them to take Kinetic Artillery cannons and punch well above their weight class. Think of them as like Royal Navy Monitor ships.
  • Terminator Dark Fate - Defiance: Movement vehicles can often carry the same firepower as Founders' military-grade APCs and tanks, sometimes even more, but they are nowhere near as resilient as they are just civilian pickup trucks, vans and Big Badass Rigs with hillbilly armour bolted on. To be more specific, all armed Movement vehicles are categorized as Light — meaning they are vulnerable even to small arms fire from infantry, a 25mm autocannon will melt them in short order, and a plasma cannon blast from a Legion tank will render them as ash and slag. The key advantage is they are usually quite mobile, and half the price of the Founders' equivalents.
  • Total War: Shogun 2 has many glass cannons in several varieties:
    • All the ranged units (the matchlocks, the archers, European cannons, etc.) all can do quite a bit of damage at range, but will die to just about any melee unit if they are let within range.
    • The Loan Sword Ashigaru have a high attack (for an ashigaru) and lots of but low armor and morale.
    • No-Dachi Samurai have only as much armor as ashigaru and almost no staying power in melee with their poor melee defence. However, they have a massive charge bonus, a powerful attack, and good morale along with an ability that makes their morale unbreakable for a short time after obtaining the Sword Expertise technology. The common notion among players is that a No-Dachi can kill anything it gets a good charge against, but will take heavy casualties if they get bogged down, making them best used to charge an enemy's flanks or rear to quickly rout them and avoid a prolonged fight.
    • The Chiyodagata-class torpedo boat is armed with a small number of relatively short-ranged cannons and is made entirely out of wood. However, if its torpedoes manage to connect with any other warship, including the mighty Warrior-class ironclad, then there is a high chance that the ship in question will explode.
  • In Total War: Warhammer and Total War: Warhammer II:
    • Savage orc units from the first game. Unlike regular orcs, who appreciate technology for its martial applications, savage orcs are truly primitive. The Clap Your Hands If You Believe nature of orc psychology means that their noxious war paint does lend them a slight degree of protection but, without real armour or shields, they drop like flies when shot at by archers or artillery and they cannot stand long in protracted melee. However their bone and stone clubs are no less effective and they fight even more savagely than regular orcs, so they hit really hard.
    • The Beastmen. Armour is very rarely used because their body shapes are so divergent and because they don't make any of their own — industry as a concept disgusts them, so any they do have is often looted and very crude. But they often have two-handed weapons and movement speed comparable to cavalry, so they can inflict extreme damage on the charge even while they suffer heavily in battles of attrition.
    • The Wood Elves, both strategically and tactically. Most of their army is made up of lightly-armoured archers and light cavalry with little in the way of heavy infantry or big combat monsters. Their Wild Riders, high-tier shock cavalry, can deal huge amounts of damage on the initial charge but have to be pulled away afterwards or they'll quickly be surrounded and shredded. On a strategic level, the Wood Elves are the only faction who can take any territory but the only territory they can really fortify is Athel Loren itself — every other territory they control consists only of a small literal Hidden Elf Village with a tiny garrison intended to scout and patrol the surrounding area.
    • In II, the Skaven of Clan Eshin units, especially the elite Deathrunners. Ranged units or head-on attacks will decimate them, but if they can get a flanking charge they will melt the enemy unit due to their Weeping Blades inflicting poison and bypassing armour as well.
    • The Eshin Legendary Lord, Deathmaster Snikch is unarmored like his rank-and-file and forced to footslog. Snikch can be gunned down or ridden down quickly if he's discovered, but if he hits melee with an enemy hero or lord, that hero or lord will not escape him unscathed.
  • Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon has several glass cannon ships:
    • Torpedo Boats are the least heavily armoured ship available to the player in the game (350 HP), and although they are only equipped with a single light gun, they make up for it with their speed and 2 Torpedo Tubes, giving them excellent firepower for a ship of its size, with the Torpedo Boat's speed compensating for the long reload time of the Torpedo Tubes. The Torpedo Boat is also the cheapest ship available to the Royal Navy, only costing 19 Victory Points, making them a very cost effective option for long range firepower.
    • Both of the Assault Cutters are medium-small ships that sacrifice armour for firepower, the Imperial version only has 1260 HP, but it is armed with 7 medium guns and 2 light guns, where as the Pirate version sacrifices the large number of medium guns for slightly better armour (1320 HP) and much larger number of light guns (1 medium gun and 12 light guns).
    • Silver's Flagship, 'Argentum' is a glass cannon compared to the other Ships of the Line, as it has the lowest HP count of all of the Ships of the Line (2760 HP, for a comparison, the Imperial Man of War has 4940 HP), however it also the fastest Ship of the Line and has the largest number of heavy guns out of all the ships in the game (13 heavy guns and 12 medium guns).
  • Tzar: The Burden Of The Crown: Both Ballistae and Mages fit the bill. The former deals outrageous damage of 61 in a game where non-magical end-game ground units have 180 at best, but moves slowly, costs a lot and is incredibly vulnerable to damage, making it more of a case of Awesome, but Impractical. The latter can lay waste to the mightiest of armies(particularly Arab Mage that has Fire Rain at his disposal) with his spells, but statistically speaking is just a much more expensive Archer with better attack range getting one-shotted by Priests.
  • Warcraft:
    • The Night Elves from Warcraft III are a largely Glass Cannon based faction. Their tier-1 units, the Archer and Huntress, are the most efficient damage-dealers around on their tier, and remain useful throughout the entire game with upgrades, but Archers have pathetic HP and armor, and will begin dying rapidly if a few melee units get close enough, while Huntresses have "unarmored" as their armor type, which means that they will go down fast against ranged fire. Even the Night Elves' late-game heavy melee unit, the Druid of the Claw, is more cannon-like than its Human, Orc, or Undead counterparts, with a strong attack and useful spells, but lower HP and/or armor than its equivalents and vulnerability to anticasters.
    • The Troll Berserker of the Horde zigzags this trope. They have a decent amount of Hit Points (450 vs 245) unlike the Night Elf Archer, but come with a Berserk "mode" that increases their attack rate by 50%, but also makes them take 40% more damage from attacks. This is especially bad if melee attackers (their counter) close the distance.
    • Like Zerglings in Starcraft, fully-upgraded Undead Ghouls act as little fast-moving heavy-DPS melee cannons, although their survival is often aided by dual auras from a Dread Lord — Death Knight hero duo. Still, that doesn't do a whole lot to save them when faced with splash fire from heavy air units or AoE spells from enemy heroes, which will cut through them in seconds.
    • Several heroes also function as Glass Cannons, especially ranged Intelligence types. The Archmage, Blood Mage and Lich go down particularly fast, yet will also deal devastating damage with their spells if they are allowed to survive long enough. The Blademaster and Warden can also be played like this, though they do have some defensive abilities that allow them to last longer or retreat when under attack.
    • Battleships and Juggernauts in Warcraft II. They have 50% more hitpoints than Destroyers, but their firepower is completely out of proportion to their durability in combat, as it takes only about two direct hits for a battleship to sink another battleship.
  • In Warhammer: Dark Omen your Bright Wizard is obviously like this, capable of raising inferno on a specific patch of land and soaring across the battlefield on a teleport-like Fire Wings but easily killed (well, as easily as almost any other human combatant in your army, it's just that they fight in squads and he is alone). Similarly, Flagellants. They are fast, furiously insane and swinging Epic Flails, but on the other hand they are few in number and cannot wear armor.
  • Warlords Battlecry, as many other RTS games, has siege weapons fulfilling this role. Dark Dwarves in III, however, have specialized siege weaponry that takes this much, much further: the Flame Cannon, which after upgrading hits harder than titans, and the Hellbore, which can pummel through anything that doesn't resist lightning (which is very, very few things), but both can die easily to anything that makes it to melee range.
    Roguelike 
  • Backpack Hero: The aptly named Glass Cannon Mode makes you one by giving all your weapons a 150% damage bonus at the cost of making you a One-Hit-Point Wonder, making you rely on shields and armor to block damage.
  • The Binding of Isaac:
    • The Afterbirth DLC adds a literal Glass Cannon. It fires a massive, powerful tear when used and it's one of the few items that recharge over time, but when you use it it turns you into exactly what it says: your health gets dropped to 1/2 heart, so take one hit and you're dead. Repentance changes it to the cannon breaking and dealing 2 hearts worth of damage to you when hit, which fixes itself on recharge.
    • The Blood Oath item grants a damage and speed buff based on the amount of red health the character has by the start of each floor, at the cost of draining that health. This means a gain in power at the cost of starting with lower health. The "Bloody Mary" challenge is built around this, giving the item to a character that can only have red health, meaning that she will begin each floor as a One-Hit-Point Wonder with buffs.
    • Judas starts out with one measly Heart Container, meaning that he dies in two hits at most until you get some health items. He also starts with the highest base damage and carries the Book of Belial, which doubles that for a room, allowing him to destroy enemies and bosses alike very quickly.
    • Eve starts out as a Fragile Speedster with low damage, but when she goes down to critical health (1/2 a heart in the original, 1 heart in the remake), Whore of Babylon kicks in and gives her a significant damage and speed boost. As a result, Eve encourages the player to deliberately stay at low health in order to use Whore of Babylon's damage buff, as her damage output is insignificant otherwise.
    • Tainted Lost takes it up to eleven. Not only is he a One-Hit-Point Wonder, he also has a special item pool that excludes most defensive and revival items. The number of hits you can take is limited to the number of Holy Cards that drop for the entire run. On the upside, having an item pool that excludes useless items like items that only give Health and better item rarity means on a good run even Superbosses will melt in a matter of seconds. Just don't get hit.
  • Crypt of the NecroDancer has the Karate Gi, which doubles your attack power but also the damage you take. And the Glass Jaw also doubles your attack, at the cost of making you a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
  • Enter the Gungeon has a Gun called the Glass Cannon. This gun does huge amounts of damage, but take one hit and it breaks. It can be repaired by collecting ammo boxes, however.
  • The Type B Stealth Cruiser in FTL: Faster Than Light is acknowledged by the game itself to be "built like a glass cannon". The Stealth Cruisers lack the Deflector Shields of most ships, forcing them to rely on their initially-limited stealth capabilities to avoid attacks. The Type A layout mitigates this disadvantage with a unique defensive augment and high engine power (which means high evasion), but the Type B is missing even those; what it does have is the Glaive Beam, the most powerful weapon in the game bar none. As a result, it can tear any early opposition into pieces easily... assuming you can keep it in one piece long enough for the weapon to charge.
  • Nuclear Throne: Melting starts with 2 HP, whereas every other character, aside from Crystal, starts with 8. To offset this, he gains one more rad per kill than any other character. He can also right click to create a blood explosion where every corpse on screen is. This can be upgraded via the Throne Butt mutation to create 3 blood explosions. If you're able to reach Level Ultra (max level), you can choose the "Brain Capacity" mutation, allowing him to explode living enemies with low HP, giving him great amounts of destructive power.
  • The Hero class from One Way Heroics. They have massive attack power and an improved critical hit chance, but they take extra damage if hit from the sides or back. Taken up to eleven once they use the Zenura Weave skill, which permanently boosts their power even more, but also forces them to be nude for the remainder of the game, barring them from the defensive benefits of armor.
  • Punny from Relic Hunters Zero, who's starter weapon is an insanely-powerful flamethrower that can roast entire hordes of enemies in only a few seconds, gets a lot of mileage out of its ammo and reloads instantly (with its only real drawbacks being its short range and reliance on heavy ammo, which can be hard to come by early on) and has really high shields allowing him to waltz right up to opponents and murder them as they try to punch through. The only things stopping him from being Purposefully Overpowered are that his shields take a long time to regenerate, and he has the lowest HP in the game, meaning if something does manage to punch through his shields (such as a grenade or rocket,) he's in for a world of hurt.

    Shoot'Em Up 
  • Angry Birds: Transformers has Energon Starscream, who can destroy a selected target in seconds, but he can be easily taken down if you don't kill the enemies onscreen first.
  • The player's helicopter in Choplifter! has unlimited ammunition, but goes down with a single enemy shot.
  • Contra has been designed this way all the time, as Bill Rizer and his partner can kill lots of enemies in one powerful shot — especially with the Spray Shot. However, they die by just taking a bullet, making the dodging skill extremely important for players to beat the game. (The Japanese version of Contra Hard Corps gives the heroes an ability to take 3 bullets before dying, but it still applies here.)
  • Exaggerated in Hong Kong '97. Chin, your character, has the potential to take out the entire population of China (which is at least 1.2 billion people), yet he can be killed in one hit.
  • Jacket from Hotline Miami. He eats Russian mobsters for breakfast, but can be put out of commission with just one pistol shot.
  • Similar to the Contra example above, all the characters in the Metal Slug series are supremely powerful One Hit Point Wonders with the exception of Ralf in 6 and 7, who's special ability is being able to take two hits instead of one.
  • Most Japanese shooter protagonists are like this; Armed to the teeth with enough firepower to cover the whole screen in bullets and wreak havoc on entire armies single-handedly, but they'll drop dead from a single shot.

    Simulation 
  • Archers in Chivalry: Medieval Warfare who use bows or crossbows can reach out and touch people at long range and can drop anyone instantly with a single shot to the head, even Knights. However they have the lowest armour value in the game and they carry only daggers, one-handed swords and cudgels for personal defence, making them quite easy to kill if you can get close — be warned though that these weapons are fast and a skilled Archer player can probably still kill you. Subverted by Archers who take javelins instead, as they can use the javelin as a spear in close quarters as well as their secondary weapon, and they have a buckler for extra protection, making them more a Jack of All Stats instead.
  • The MechWarrior series carries over many of the glass cannons from its source material, BattleTech:
    • Behold, the Hollander II in Mechwarrior Living Legends. A mech so dedicated to firepower that it has a cannon where its shoulder should be. It carries ballistic armaments that mechs twenty tons heavier can struggle with, but it has paper for armor and the cannon is a huge target, especially since the usual Gauss Rifle will violently explode when destroyed. A few variants mount a Jump Jet Pack of Sprint Shoes to allow it to escape danger.
    • The Loki / Hellbringer in Living Legends and to a less extent in the other games is dedicated either to pure firepower or a mixture of firepower and scouting equipment, and carries armor only slightly better than a mech half its weight. The Loki Prime can unleash righteous fury at long range courtesy of twin Particle Projector Cannon, but will be outright destroyed if it faces equal return fire.
    • Support mechs throughout the series often dedicate themselves completely to firepower, armor and sustainability be damned. The Yeoman in the Freeware Game release of Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries carries almost nothing but long range missiles and will fold under return fire, aggravated by its massive slab-faced missile launchers giving it the hitbox of a mech almost twice its weight. In Living Legends, missile mechs also face the added danger of being Point Defenseless courtesy of a minimum arming distance on their missiles and the addition of Powered Armor infantry.
    • In Living Legends, the man-sized Battle Armor die in a single hit from a sizable majority of the game's weapons, but the BA are extremely agile, tiny, and pack the firepower of a 60 ton battlemech with careful application of their satchel charges. As a "Bad Ass", it's David Versus Goliath, and you're the Personal Space Invader.
  • War Thunder: Many Cold War tanks with powerful guns, decent mobility and poor armor (as their real life counterparts qualify as this), even more with IFV and late light tanks which are thin like an eggshell yet can have devastating high-caliber cannons or even anti-tank rockets. But the VT1-2 tank destroyer prototype is on another level. It has twin (!) 120 mm cannons that can reload in 5-7 seconds, it can accelerate up to 70 km/h in a few seconds... and only 50 mm of armor thickness, meaning that even AA autocannons and aircraft guns (or old ww2 tanks brought by troll players) will quickly dispose of it. All of this with the three crew members packed in one line in the front of the vehicle screaming "poor survivability" even if a shot doesn't detonate the tank.
    • Several US ships qualify as this with impressive firepower, but rather poor or average-at-best armor. The most offending case is the infamous Moffett destroyer, which has good guns and a ridiculously high rate of fire, meaning that you can submerge in your cannon spam your opponents that you don't quickly penetrate to death, either bleeding out their crew or waiting for the decisive detonating shot. However, its armor is thin, and its ammo is concentrated on the rear side, meaning that enemies who know what to do will instantly target it. If you don't maneuver to cover your back, expect to be frequently ammo-racked, even in one shot.
    • Bombers are really fragile, often dying to a single burst of cannons, but their machine gun turrets in various cases can prove to be lethal, if not for their caliber then for the sheer amount of More Dakka they can unleash. Competent players will directly aim with them and snipe interceptors from beyond 1 km of distance, rather than using the AI gunners which are not that good and only start to fire when the enemy is too dangerously close. No one should approach, if you don't want to see your tail cut loose by a short burst.

    Sports 
  • Dmitri Petrovich, Achmed Khan, and Annie Frazier of the Backyard Sports series. They always have great offensive skills, but weak defensive skills.
  • The Rad Rockers in Mutant League Football have one of the highest-rated offenses in the game, led by a skilled QB and excellent receivers. On defense, however, their weak defensive line keeps them from sacking or putting pressure on the QB, and they can't stop running plays from picking up yards.
  • In the Spiritual Successor Mutant Football League, the Tokyo Terminators and Galaxy Chaos. Both teams have a all-star offensive weapons at their disposal, but flounder on D for opposite reasons. The Terminators have the lowest-rated defense in the game and are especially inept against the pass due to a feeble secondary. The Chaos have a solid secondary, but can't stop the run with their weak-hitting defenders.
  • The American Dreams and the Battle Heroes in 2020 Super Baseball. They're focused on offense (that is, hitting) to the extreme, which means that they get good contact on a lot of pitches and their best players have serious home run power. However, with weak pitching and fielding they can't keep the other team from scoring. The other hitting-based teams, the Tokyo Samurai and the Metal Slashers, have the same problems on a milder scale because their defense is a little better at the expense of some hitting power.
  • Mima in Touhou Soccer is infamous for her Twilight Spark. Contrarily to many other shots with over-the-top animations, this one is exactly as formidable as it looks, as can be seen in the video, where it breaks through 5 players, the goalie, and still breaks the net. Unfortunately, Mima has garbage stats in everything else.

    Survival Horror 
  • In Eternal Darkness, you can control Dr. Edward Roivas, Alex's grandfather and de facto narrator of the story, in one level. He has probably the lowest health in all the game. However, in his level you can acquire the Elephant Gun, which can be set to fire double-barrels, and often knocks scrawny Edward flat on his back when he fires it. But you can do massive damage to, if not outright kill a lot of enemies with even one single barrel shot with it.
  • In Resident Evil 4: Ada in "The Mercenaries" mode has the smallest HP bar of the Mercenaries and a weak melee kick, but she is also the fastest on her feet. She has a loadout comprised of a pistol, a TMP machine pistol, and a semi-auto sniper rifle. Lacking a potent melee move or panic weapon means she can get into trouble if she is overwhelmed up close, though she does wreak havoc at a distance.

    Third-Person Shooter 
  • The Commando class from Battlefield Heroes combines a knife wielding, invisibility-enabled spy with a sniper. Knife attacks can kill other players more or less instantly while the piercing shot ability makes sniper rifle bullets more damaging than a direct hit from a tank cannon, but they have only 80 health and die extremely quickly.
  • Sniper Elite 5: Karl is situationally a cannon (headshots, especially with the rifle, and sneak takedowns), but is always glass. Even on the lower difficulties, getting into a shootout with more than one enemy is very dangerous. Most of the missions require you to infiltrate enemy bases, so sniping from a safe distance is not always an option.
  • E-Liter 4K in Splatoon 3 is a rifle that outranges any other weapon in the game and inflicts guaranteed instakills on direct hit, which allows it to bully the whole enemy team across the map in the right hands - however, its extremely slow reload rate (1.5 seconds per shot) and lackluster defensive tools turn tables quickly if someone manages to close in. Considering you can't change weapons mid-match, the E-Liter player has to fully commit to glass cannon routine after picking one.
  • Warframe:
    • Frames whose focus is stealth are generally capable of extremely devastating strikes, but are incapable of crowd control unless there is a more balanced or defensive frame there to help, or the frame is wielding a powerful weapon.
    • Kullervo is a heavy damage-dealing Warframe, able to do large amounts of burst damage and Damage Over Time to both single targets and large crowds. However, he has no shields, making him unable to exploit shield gating, and unlike other shield-less Warframes, he has little in the way of defensive abilities: while Inaros has a massive base health pool and can boost his armor, and Nidus has an Auto-Revive passive and can redirect damage to enemies, Kullervo only gains a small amount of Overguard from one of his ability. This means that he can quickly cut down enemies, but will himself go down in an instant if he takes a hit from a high-level enemy.
    • Operators are teenagers from a ship lost in the terrifying realm called the "Void", which mutated them into Liminal Beings with astronomical powers... but without giving them the strength to match, meaning they were susceptible to losing control of said powers with disastrous results. Gameplay-wise, the Operators play the role of Squishy Wizard in combat, capable of practically unrivalled DPS, but are still no more durable than, well, your average teenagers, in a world populated by cybernetically augmented supersoldiers, plasma weapons, and sentient abominations around every corner.

    Turn-Based Strategy 
  • Advance Wars:
    • Sturm in the first game, but only when fought in the campaign, has 120% attack but only 80% defense. Inverted when played in VS or War Room, where he is a Difficult, but Awesome CO who has 80% attack and 120% defense.
    • Grimm, one of the new guys from Dual Strike, has a similar mechanic to Sturm but has 130% attack and only 80% defense day-to-day without using CO powers. One of the upsides to this is that his CO gauge will fill up very quickly, as he deals and takes way more damage and losing units fills it faster than destroying units.
    • Mech units. On the offense they are as powerful as a tank. On the defense they are as weak as an infantry. They become quite dangerous in mountains though, as with their +30 defense they'll only take around 4HP from a tank and will still manage to hit back for around 3HP.
    • Cruisers are this while engaging air units. They'll one-shot copters and stealth, and drain fighters and bombers to between 3 to 4HP if they attack first. On the defense, they'll lose half their health to a battle copter or stealth (though will still hit back hard) and will be obliterated by a bomber. It's still not a favorable engagement for any air unit other than a bomber to attack one, but compared to anti-air which will annihilate the attacking air unit on counter-attack it's pretty glassy.
    • Indirect units do gigantic amounts of damage to anything they attack and can attack over a distance, but cannot counter-attack at all, can't attack things that are too close to them, and have such low defense that anything bigger than an infantry will casually drain about half their health in an attack. The most pronounced are rocket units, which hit as hard as a medium tank but can be damaged for around 1/3 of their health by basic infantry.
    • Air units in general are this, with the exception of transport copters. They can all pack quite the hit, with the cheap battle copter being able to do respectable damage to tanks, vehicles, ships, and infantries, and can even do cost-effective damage against medium and neotanks, and with fighters, bombers, and stealth planes being able to inflict heavy damage to anything they can target. They even double as Fragile Speedsters as they can outpace pretty much any other unit without being slowed down by terrain (but still being vulnerable to weather). The trade-off is that everything that counters them, anti-air guns, missiles, cruisers, and enemy fighters, will all either drain them to being useless or outright one-shot them with a single attack.
  • A number of units in The Battle For Wesnoth fit this trope:
    • The Horseman, which uses a Death or Glory 'charge' attack that causes it to deal and take double damage in melee on it's turn. Good for dealing finishing blows or hitting Squishy Wizards, but can backfire catastrophically against a melee target. Its upgrade, the Lancer, takes this up to eleven.
    • An even more extreme Death or Glory attacker is the Dwarvish Ulfserker, and its upgrade, the Berserker, pictured above. It will not stop attacking in melee until either it or its opponent is dead. The Ulf is thus extremely effective against Squishy Wizards and other ranged units, but since the ability triggers in the enemy's turn as well, it also makes it extremely vulnerable against almost all standard melee units, which will either defeat it or heavily injure it in a straight fight, and are usually cheaper too.
    • A more mundane example would be the Mage and its upgrades, and its chaotic counterpart, the Dark Adept. These units are just standard Squishy Wizard Glass Cannons, with powerful magical ranged attacks but low HP, no impressive resistances, and pathetic or no melee attacks. A melee Glass Cannon would be the Thief and its upgrades, but they need to Back Stab in order to gain their high damage.
    • There are also the various offense-oriented upgrade options for units that were, in themselves, not Glass Cannons, but became so upon leveling up. Such as the Deathblade, which deals a good 25% more damage and moves 20% faster than it's counterpart, the Revenant, but has lower HP and cannot level up further. Or the Shadow, which gains the ability to skirmish, nightstalk, and Back Stab, but loses the defensive edge granted by the life-draining ability of its counterpart, the Wraith. Or the Elvish Marksman, which does very high damage for its level and gets an accuracy-boosting ability, but sacrifices the melee strength, HP, and hiding ability of the Elvish Ranger. The list could go on and on…
    • The Drakes are an entire race of Glass Cannons. They're super fast with their wings and have powerful attacks — all but one of the drake units have both melee and ranged attacks — but they're exceedingly weak against anything pointy or cold. They're also lawful and very expensive. Fighting undead with them is, therefore, an exercise in getting all of your drakes into defensive positions by nightfall and using horribly weak saurians to try and keep your attacking momentum.
  • Harebrained Schemes' Battletech features multiple examples of these amongst its stock 'mechs taken from the tabletop game, nevermind the monstrosities you can cook up in the mech lab.
    • The UM-R60L Urbanmech variant is equipped with a mere four tonnes of armour, which would be decent for a light 'mech if it didn't also completely lack the speed most light 'mechs use to pick their battles and survive. In return, it mounts the absolutely massive AC/20 autocannon, allowing it to core pretty much anything up to twice its size with one hit and potentially One-Hit Kill any 'mech in the game by Sniping the Cockpit.
    • The JR7-D Jenner light 'mech runs four medium lasers and an SRM launcher to obtain damage that looks decent on a mech almost twice its size. Its armour, meanwhile, is of the 'cardboard' variety and it is dependent on high speed and ambush tactics to survive anything above 'being looked at funny'.
    • The BJ-1 Blackjack medium 'mech runs two long-range AC/2 sniper cannons and a quad of medium lasers to pummel anything that gets close. It has somewhat subpar armour for a medium 'mech as a result.
    • The SHD-2D Shadowhawk alternative adds an array of medium lasers and SRM launchers to the Master of None Shadowhawk, with the extra weight coming entirely out of its armour.
    • The RFL-3N Rifleman heavy 'mech mounts a pair of large lasers, two long-range AC/5 autocannons, and two medium lasers for anything that comes within brawling range, giving it an impressive 240 alpha strike damage at optimum range. Its armour, particularly in the rear, is so infamously weak that an infantry support weapon like a machine gun can punch through it in one go.
    • The JM6-S Jagermech heavy 'mech is a Blackjack on steroids, replacing two of the Blackjack's medium lasers for a pair of AC/5 long-range autocannons, massively increasing its range. Due to all the ammo and heavy guns it carries, however, its engine is comically undersized and its armour nonexistent: If forced into close-range combat, it will die quickly.
  • Civilization V:
    • Ranged units are designed to dish out high damage from afar, but easily perish when attacked by close combat units. The submarine, however, takes the cake. It is the only unit in game capable of destroying another one of its kind in just one hit — testimony to both it's great firepower and overall squishiness.
    • Venice has a doubled trade route and enhanced Great Merchants, which makes it absurdly easy for Venice to build up lots of gold, buy a metric ton of units, and ally with dozens of city-states. Venice also happens to be a Land of One City, and it's reliant on those trade routes to generate money. It has an easy time of bullying other people in the mid-game, but if another civilization declares war on it first, all it takes is a bit of plundering and a handful of siege units in Venice's capital and the game is basically over.
  • Fire Emblem:
    • The Myrmidon/Samurai character class; very powerful, but dies if a heavy-duty attacker so much as looks at it funny. Rutger of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade in particular is known for hitting absurdly high crit rates, but often has trouble surviving, especially when he can sometimes risk crit himself.
    • The Fighter and Pirate classes have good strength, but unimpressive defense. Dart from Blazing Blade comes to mind: absurdly high Strength and Crit ratio, poor defense and resistance, and at the beginning more than one Skill problem.
    • The Sniper class historically falls into this: extremely high offense that can't be countered by melee attackers, a boosted crit rate in some games, and bonus damage against flying opponents, but it is not only somewhat frail, but it (usually) can't counter at close range, making it something of a sitting duck that enemies prefer to target. Much of the viability of Snipers from game to game is dependent on whether enemies are tough enough to warrant their excessive offensive focus.
    • The Bishop and Sage classes have relatively low HP and Defense, but their attacks hit on Resistance rather than Defense, meaning they effectively function like an Armor-Piercing Attack in many games. A particularly good example is Lucius from Blazing Blade: he is a powerful light magic user and has more Skill than the average Monk/Bishop so he'll get many criticals on his enemies, but his defense is so abysmal that he should be kept away from the front lines at all costs until at least he's promoted.
    • Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 tends to have a lot of characters that fit this mold, due to its notoriously oddball crit mechanics and extremely powerful skills and weapons enabling player units to do insane damage, but also making defensively-strong characters and statboosting items relatively uncommon. Magic units have a particularly evident case of this, as they can take down even bosses fairly easily due to bypassing gate defenses, but have abysmal Defense and handle weapon weight very poorly (particularly Olwen).
    • Pretty much every enemy in the higher difficulties of the DS games falls into this, due to the way enemy stat boosts are handed out. Usually, the only defensively-oriented stat that goes up is HP, meaning you'll rarely find a situation where you just straight-up can't damage the enemy. However, offensive stat gains in Strength, Skill, and to an extent Speed, are substantial, and the enemy also receives significantly boosted weapon ranks and stronger weapons to use with them (going all the way up to forged Brave weapons, which hit like a truck and always attack twice).
    • Conversely, this is also the case for player units in the remake of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. Many characters have unusually low defenses, particularly HP, but the existence of weapon forging means that it's pretty easy to have characters wielding weapons that can one-shot enemies. Caeda, considered the game's best unit, epitomizes this due to her Wing Spear dealing effective damage to both armored and cavalry units (effectively canceling out her low Strength) and her high Speed enabling her to basically double anything. She also has terrible HP and middling Defense, and even after her promotion turns her into more of a Lightning Bruiser, she will still probably die in one good shot from a bow-user or an arrowspate.
    • The weapons version is the glass weapons in New Mystery of the Emblem, which have a ridiculously high damage output but break after three uses.
    • Lysithea and Constance in Three Houses have very low HP, Strength, and Defense growths, but also very high Magic growths and access to some of the strongest spells in the game (Dark Spikes Τ and Hades Ω for Lysithea, and Bolting, Abraxas, and Agnea's Arrow for Constance).
  • It's pretty easy to design those in Galactic Civilizations II and III, since all you need is a freighter hull (which has 1 HP) that can mount lots of weapons. You can also put lots of defenses on it, preventing a low-DPS enemy from actually getting to that 1 HP, since damage has to be higher than defense rating for that to happen. This can be useful in the early game, when all you have a small- and medium-sized ships, and you need firepower fast. While you'll go through lots of these "auxiliary cruisers", they can quickly chew up a powerful enemy fleet before going down.
  • Heroes of Might and Magic:
    • Heroes Of Might And Magic III: Halflings are pretty good ranged attackers but if the enemy gets in melee range with it, you can kiss the guys goodbye.
    • Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes: Fiona becomes this when using the Spider Cloak relic. It boosts the attack power of her units by 100%, allowing her to take on enemies far above her level. But she starts the battle with only 10% of her hit points (and depending on the platform, it's capped at 10, rather than reduced).
  • Kaiju Wars: The Maser Cannon can inflict a tremendous 6 points of damage to enemy kaiju without upgrades, but it is just as slow and fragile as the rest of your units.
  • Luminous Arc 2's Ayano is one of the strongest and fastest fighters in the game, yet for obvious reasons, her physical defense isn't quite as high. But she can tank against magic, due her high Resistance.
  • Mordheim: City of the Damned:
    • The Cult of the Possessed epitomize this trope to a tee. The Cult's units generally have excellent damage potential, above-average mobility, lots of spellcasting, and some have the ability to get mutations to grant them special benefits. They also have subpar defences and morale, meaning not only do they die easily but they can't sustain heavy casualties either.
    • Some high-risk-high-reward fighter builds give the character a hefty two-handed weapon and very little armor. They're intended to Charge or Ambush the enemy, wallop them with the opening hit (and hopefully incapacitate or stun them) and then disengage to repeat the process. If the enemy isn't dead or stunned, or the attack misses, that fighter is in trouble. Even worse, they may get isolated and surrounded, leaving them to be cut to ribbons.
  • Shining Force: units are either incredibly sturdy or some form of this trope. The most prominent two are any promoted mages (they start out not dishing out much more damage than your other fighters, but when they learn level three spells, they become this) and centaurs, who are the strongest in terms of physical damage along with dwarves and have as much durability as a piece of wet tissue paper, even if you equip them with a lot of defensive accessories.
  • Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:
    • The game lets you design units like this, and the game's combat mechanics exacerbate it tremendously. When a unit attacks another, the only factors involved are the attacker's firepower and the defender's armor rating (not, as one would think, both sides' firepower modified by the opposing side's armor). So a unit can be utterly unkillable so long as it's doing the shooting, but turns into the Red Shirt Army when on the defensive. Of course, units with both heavy armor and heavy weaponry are exponentially more expensive, so it's often best to built Stone Wall units to stand alongside them on the off chance someone starts taking shots at them.
    • Helicopter units, which are the only air units able to attack multiple times per turn, epitomize this. Unless the defender has some interceptors or units with anti-air tracking, a few helicopters with decent weapons can rapidly trash a city's garrison and let your ground forces stroll in and take over.
  • The Dracosage class of Soul Nomad & the World Eaters has abilities that can take out entire groups from many spaces away as well as ridiculously strong magic, but has extremely low HP and defense and dies very quickly.
  • Mysterion in South Park: The Fractured but Whole has high-damaging attacks, one of which inflicts Defense Down for even more damage, but he also has the lowest health of all close-range party members and no way to heal or shield himself. However, he also has the unique ability of being able to fight even after being defeated, albeit only by inflicting status effects. His Limit Break in this form allows him to revive himself.
  • Super Robot Wars:
    • Katina Tarask. When she first joins, she's one of the few characters you'll have that'll get the dreaded Hot-Blooded Spirit command early on. She'll also eventually get the R-Gun, which literally a robot that turns into a giant gun. Too bad her defense is shoddy, and aside from destroying enemy units, the only way to boost her morale is to either have her take hits or miss her shots.
    • At least in J, Domon Kasshu also seems to be one of these. He has Hot Blood, of course, and once the Super/Hyper Mode activates and he gets his Finishing Moves online, he can do ridiculous quantities of damage in or out of his size range. His Shining/God Gundam is, shall we say, missing the defensive side of the Super Robot archetype, and his dodging skills are mediocre.
    • Getter-1 is traditionally one of these as well. While it has all of the powerful boss-killing attacks (Getter Beam, Shine Spark, Stoner Sunshine), it also can't dodge or take hits.
    • Dancougar is the posterchild for this. Four (later five) pools of Spirit commands to work with combined with very powerful attacks for both close and long range combat. It is much more efficient and practical than Combattler V or Voltes V except for having very thin armor and a very low health bar. Upgrades can alleviate this, however.
    • Pretty much EVERY Super Robot in Super Robot Wars Destiny is this because of a Game-Breaking Bug that makes higher armor not work properly for damage reduction.
    • Perhaps the best example for the whole series would be the Dunbine and Billvine/Billbine. They are incredibly fragile with non-existent armor and are as fast and dodgy as that would imply. The catch is that they also hit like bricks with their "Hype Aura Slash" attacks which are powered by their pilot's "Aura Battler" skills, making the billbine one of the best units to do huge amounts of damage, but a single hit to it means you lose a unit.
    • The Gravion and later the Sol Gravion in Super Robot Wars Z. A solid attack set with good coverage and six spirit pools to work with — three of which have access to Hot Blood. The main problem is main pilot Touga's paltry Defense stat and lack of Prevail. If the Gravion's weaknesses aren't covered, players will end up burning through the pilots' SP just to keep it alive.
    • Until Wataru's "Hero"note  levels are high enough and gains access to Ryuoumaru in Super Robot Wars X, Wataru will not be charging in the front lines and live as his defensive options are limited to "Persist"note  and "Foresee"note  from Ryujinmaru. He does have some powerful attacks and transforming Ryujinmaru into Ryuoumaru gives him a free HP and EN refill.
  • Sword of the Stars:
    • The Zuul combine this with Fragile Speedster. Their ships are basically lots of gun turrets glued together on a frightfully fast frame, and their general battle style tends towards We Have Reserves.
    • The Liir are an almost better example. Liir ships are slow tactically, bulky, fragile, have few turret mounts, and have very high mass for their size (because they're filled with liquid). But the Liir's frightful research speed ensures they'll almost always be a level above you in the high-tech weapons, their ships have a lot of special weapons slots (such as for heavy beams and torpedoes), and they can quickly reconfigure their ships to counter your own technological advances. Their ships also turn on a dime and have the highest base strategic speed outside of the Node drive. They're also more likely to get those nice hard-to-get techs, such as point-defense phasers (which can defeat most Macross Missile Massacres) and advanced cloaks (which allows you to fire while being invisible). This is taken up to eleven in the sequel, where the Liir-Prester Zuul Alliance gives Liir access to Zuul riders with the More Dakka that implies but no real durability benefit.
  • Scouts in XCOM: Long War, properly equipped, supported and trained, are absolute murder machines with various ways to avoid damage. However, with no abilities that increase their ability to take damage, they will pay if anything connects.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! Capsule Monster Coliseum, Fire-type monsters have excellent attack, but are frail and often can't move very far.

    Visual Novel 
  • Red spirits in Aselia the Eternal - The Spirit of Eternity Sword fall into this role. They have a lot amount of actions per round and have poor shield skills, but do damage to all opponents at once. Pretty heavy damage, too. Orpha would be the strongest example as the beefier green spirits or Etrangers normally have at least twice the amount of health she does.
  • Fate/stay night:
    • Assassin has an E rank in Endurance, but his sword skill is unmatched, and nearly every one of his strikes would be fatal if his primary opponent wasn't Saber, and even she needs outside influence to be able to survive his Tsubame Gaeshi.
    • Gilgamesh possesses positively world-destroying power on the offense at his highest and he can bury people in a Storm of Blades even when he isn't trying, but he's such a Smug Super that he tends to walk into battle with minimal defenses and dropping his guard the moment he believes he has won. Consequently, all routes show him being taken out by opponents he should be able to beat, simply because he couldn't be bothered with taking things seriously before he was in mortal danger. In UBW and Heaven's Feel, part of the reason he gets grievously wounded is because he didn't put on his incredibly-durable golden armor for the fight due to not feeling his opponent was worth it only to get blindsided and lose a limb or two for his troubles. It's worth noting that this vulnerability is strictly relative though — as a Servant and demigod, he is Immune to Bullets by default, and he also shows no injury whatsoever taking a kick to the face from Saber in the Fate route.
  • Galaxy Angel: Ranpha's Emblem Frame, the Kung-Fu Fighter, has high firepower and is very fast and maneuverable, but also has the weakest armor of the team, meaning that while she's usually the first to intercept the enemy ships, she'll also be the first to take the brunt of their counterattacks.
    • On the sequel trilogy, Galaxy Angel II, Anise's Relic Raider fills the same role, fast and with decent firepower while also having very weak armor.
  • Sunrider has two examples from the player-controlled Ryders:
    • The Phoenix overlaps with this and Fragile Speedster, as it is by far the fastest and most evasive of the player Ryders but it also has the least health and no armor. It also suffers from Crippling Overspecialization as its swords and submachineguns excel at destroying enemy Ryders but are worthless against capital ships. Fortunately, the Phoenix has a stealth generator to let her get in her target’s face without getting shot to pieces.
    • The Seraphim has the second-lowest health after the Phoenix, ties with the Bianca for being the second slowest after the Paladin, and has little armor and no flak, but its sniper rifle can take out most enemy Ryders in a single hit and badly damage capital ships if not destroy them outright. Her Super Mode takes this up to eleven, boosting her already-high accuracy and damage output for several turns at the cost of a few hit points.
    • Sunrider 4: The Captain's Return has Ryuvian Lancer frigates, slow, lightly-armored spacecraft which mount a single weapon that can only be fired once in a given turn. That weapon is a laser on par with the Sunrider's Vanguard Cannon. A hit from that thing will do a lot of damage, provided the Lancer doesn't get shot down before it can fire.

    Western RPG 
  • Goggs in AdventureQuest are definitely this. They always go first in battle and deal abnormally high amounts of damage when they strike. However, their defenses are so awful that any well-equipped character should be able to kill a Gogg in one or two hits on the Counter-Attack.
  • In Baldur's Gate, Shar-Teel Dosan is this. Very good strength, letal with blades, yet her constitution is desperately weak for a fighter. At least her dexterity is good and can parry for a while, but should an enemy land any hit and she's screwed... use her for hit-and-run tactics while someone else like Kagain tanks damage.
    • The Enhanced Edition introduced Dorn, with the amazing strength of an half-orc and the strong powers of a blackguard, but a bit lackluster in constitution. At low levels, if he's unlucky, he might die by a single critical hit.
  • In Baldur's Gate II Big Bad Jon Irenicus goes down very quickly if you can remove his protection spells. Just hope you can pull it off before he tears you apart with Time Stop and Power Word spells. Contrast with the Made of Iron Big Bad of the previous game who can take plenty of hits and has insane magic resistance but is limited to powerful melee power attacks.
    • Mages are glass cannons in general. When their protections are dispelled or run out of time, they are dead meat. But until that moment, they are the most destructive force in Faerun because of Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards.
  • The 2004 The Bard's Tale game has the Vorpal Rat. Has the highest damaging attack among your summons, but it has only 1 HP.
  • Instead of a character class per se, the Glass Cannon archetype is a strategy in both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. The idea is to stack items and weapons capable of boosting damage (mostly magic, but physical damage is not unheard of). Usually, there are multiple items that boosts attack either at the cost of defense (eg Monk's Head Collar or Crown of Dusk, which increases magic damage at the cost of magic defense) or only activates when your health is low (such as Clever Rat's Ring, Morion Blade, or Red Tearstone Ring). Combining all of them, and you get a character that is very low on health such that he/she will die in one poke, but deals such absurdly high damage that one good shot is all it usually takes. It works horribly well in both PvE and PvP environments. For bonus aesthetics, when the low-HP buff effect takes place, the character glows with a characteristic aura.
  • Darkest Dungeon has the Shieldbreaker, Grave Robber and Highwayman fill this role (with elements of Fragile Speedster). All have low HP in favour of Dodge (especially the Grave Robber), and all can dish out a ton of hurt: the Grave Robber can deal devastating long-range criticals before vanishing in a cloud of stuns, the Highwayman can put out a ton of bleed and/or counterattack damage, and the Shieldbreaker can cut through heavy armour like it's butter or inflict blight on an entire enemy formation. To a lesser extent, there's the Occultist, but he pushes himself out of this trope by having a powerful but unreliable heal and a debuff that drops the targeted enemy's damage. Averted with the Antiquarian, however; while she has low HP and a reasonable dodge, particularly with trinkets, none of her abilities beyond her forced-guard buff are particularly damaging — her job isn't to win individual battles, it's to give you an edge in the war by coming out of every dungeon with a sack of money weighing as much as she does.
  • Deltarune has Noelle who combines this trope with Squishy Wizard: she starts with the lowest HP of the team, but if you go on the Snowgrave Route, you can increase her offensive magic to a point where she can freeze enemies with one attack and even make her learn an insanely powerful spell if you make her wear an armor that depletes her HP.
    • On the same route, Kris can become this (coupled with Fragile Speedster) against Spamton NEO: even if they have the highest HP they will ever have, make more damage than ever and even get a double damage special move which has nothing to envy to Susie's Red Buster, they fight the Superboss alone, which means that they take all the damage if they fail to dodge, and they can't ask Ralsei to make them a shield around the soul.
    • Funnily, on both Routes, you can invoke this with Spamton NEO: if you abuse a glitch that allows you to spam big shots, you can destroy his attacks more easily, but he will increase his power in rage, making you more vulnerable if you miss.
  • Dragon Age series:
    • Rogues tend to be capable of dealing immense damage, but typically have little means to mitigate damage, even compared to Mages.
    • Two-handed Warriors can also be built to maximize damage at the expense of survivability. Of the series' companions, Fenris of Dragon Age II leans the most this way, and as a bonus gets a unique talent that gives an immense boost to his attack power when his health is low. Iron Bull of Dragon Age: Inquisition is another example, as throughout the game he generally boasts the highest strength, but constitution remains on level with the rogues and mages.
    • The Reaver specialization in Inquisition encourages a glass cannon playstyle: passives increase your damage the more wounded you are and activated skills include powerful attacks that are Cast from Hit Points and marking a small area which further increases the damage bonus you receive from being wounded. The above-mentioned Iron Bull uses this specialization, and it's also available to warrior players.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
    • This is a typical build for stealth-based characters like assassins or thieves. Stealth-based characters can deal ludicrous amounts of damage with sneak attacks: 3x damage with bows, 6x damage with one-handed weapons, and 15x damage with daggers (all of which can be doubled again with certain equips), so long as the attack is done while undetected. Thus, stealth-based characters are likely to have lower armor skills (because they never or rarely get hit, resulting in very little relevant experience being gained in that skill), and on level-up, are likely to neglect raising health in favor of magicka (for spells) or stamina (for archery zoom time and sprinting to get away from overwhelming force), resulting in characters who regularly one-shot bosses, but will die to a regular mook's Offhand Backhand. Note, though, that this mostly applies to stealth characters whose preferred offense is physical/weapons-based.
    • A dual wielding build is like this to a slightly lesser extent. You have to forego a shield or restoration spell to do it and you don't even get the ability to block or the increased reach that a two handed weapon would provide, but dual wielders by far have the highest DPS of any build, getting literally twice the benefit from weapon improving (due to having two weapons) and a dual wield specific perk that boosts the power of dual wield attacks by 50%.
    • Werewolves can unleash a savage number of staggering, hard-hitting attacks and can cover ground really fast, but they can't wear armour, cast healing spells or use potions. In a previous patch, a game glitch meant that they had an armour value of zero, giving them the same durability of a mage in robes or a character who was completely naked, and making the werewolf form Awesome, but Impractical. That is, unless the player goes to the effort of grinding to raise their maximum health to levels high enough to absorb a lot of damage, in which case the werewolf form is death incarnate to the Dragonborn's enemies.
  • E.Y.E: Divine Cybermancy combines this with Magikarp Power due to the several layers of complication with Polyclones. Not-so-direct copies of the Player that die in a few shots and wield lowly pistols with little use later on. They don't become CANNONS unless you develop your PSI-Force stat to higher levels, which gives them access to more decent weaponry (like Machineguns incapable of Full-Auto), and at a remarkably high amount; will gain access to anti-tank rifles, grenade launchers, and even a Chain Gun. Your PSI-Force will also determine the amount of clones summoned, so imagine that AND the amount of upgrades they get by then. They STILL have inconsistent accuracy until you can issue a shortcut to "Order" them to "Go Hunt!" to where they will begin to become as Competent as the AI; taking cover fire, lobbing grenades, and shooting VERY accurately. And to top it off, they also share the same movement speed as the player character, so wearing lighter armor would turn them into Fragile Speedsters.
  • Gacha World:
    • The game has many units that prioritize ATK over HP, but some are very blatantly more so than others. Take for example, Senpai Slayer Kuku which has roughly 100x more ATK than HP at max level (level 300) and exaggerates this even further with a leader skill that multiplies team ATK by 2x while dividing team HP by 10x. Scythe Ripper's leader skill comes in second where it multiplies team ATK by 1.9x and then divides team HP by 5x.
    • For the enemies, DJ Phantom which is the boss of Vinyl City, hits very hard compared to other bosses while being squishier than most bosses at the same level when played through boss mode. Somewhat downplayed because he mainly relies on his reaper minion to deal the major damage instead of dealing it himself.note 
  • Geneforge series:
    • Shapers and Agents usually prioritize Intelligence and either Shaping or magic skills over Endurance (which raises health) or Strength (which increases the weight of equipment a character can equip). The Gruesome Charm item, which appears in all games after the second, encourages this by raising Intelligence and Dexterity at the cost of lowering Endurance.
    • The Wingbolt creations have fast and blistering attacks, but are very frail. They're best placed at the back of a Shaper's army, but a Shock Trooper can make best use of these by tanking and healing as they snipe.
  • Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn is this compared to the machines she fights. She can only survive a few hits from the more powerful machines but makes up for it by being able to deal massive damage from stealth. She does have melee attacks, but using them against anything other than the weaker machines generally results in death.
  • Knights of the Old Republic:
    • Jedi Consulars, along with the Prestige Classes Jedi Master and Sith Lord in the second. They get lots of Force powers (three every two levels) and positively silly amounts of Force points to use them with, but they get much fewer Vitality Points than the more combat-oriented class, in addition to getting fewer feats and skill points.
    • Certain party members also count. Mission Vao is a Twi'lek teenager with high dexterity and a nasty sneak attack, but she's got the lowest hit points in the party. T3-M4, your faithful companion droid in both games, can be equipped with flamethrowers and heavy blasters, but the little guy also doesn't have much for armor or shields.
  • LISA:
    • There's the recruitable party member Tiger Man, who wields a spear and sports some of the highest attack power in the game, however it's offset by his pathetically small HP. His health can drop even more if he's under the effects of Joy Withdrawal.
    • Terry Hintz can also be this if you unlock his Magikarp Power with The Hottest Dance, which is the most powerful skill in the entire game. This, of course, is offset by his weak defenses and pitiful HP.
  • Mass Effect:
    • In Mass Effect, Garrus Vakarian is pretty much one of these. He is one of only three squad members who can use assault rifles — the most powerful and versatile weapon in the game — and one of only two characters who can use sniper rifles. On top of that, his class is Turian Agent, which gives him up to a 30% bonus to assault rifle and sniper rifle accuracy and damage. On top of that, he has access to Assault Training, which gives him an additional 10% boost to all damage, plus the Adrenaline Burst talent, which lets him remove the cooldown timers on all of his talents. On top of that, he has access to the Sabotage, Overload, and Damping powers, allowing him to shut down enemy weapons, shields, and tech/biotic powers. In short, he can lock down an enemy and slaughter the remainder faster than anyone else, and then do it all again a second later, all from a very long range. The only problem is, of all the "combat" characters, he has the lowest health, cannot use the Fitness talent (which boosts health and provides the Immunity power) and can only wear medium armor at best, and that only after significant investment in talent points. Fortunately, the Electronics talent lets him boost his shields several times over to make up for that deficiency.
    • In Mass Effect 2, Garrus is joined by Kasumi Goto and Mordin Solus.
    • Starting in Mass Effect 2, the Engineer class can supplement their default power arsenal of Incinerate, Overload, Cryo Blast, Combat Drone, and AI Hacking. Add this to the fact that the Collector Ship mission will either unlock Assault Rifles or Sniper Rifles for them, and that Advanced Training can provide them with a biotic power (Warp or Reave) that can damage armor, health, and biotic barriers, or with specialized ammunition, and the Engineer can be among the hardest-hitting classes in the game. The downside is that they have low health/shields and no directly defensive powers unless they use Advanced Training to aquire Fortificaton, Barrier, or Geth Shield Boost, which deprives them of an anti-Barrier power.
    • Mordin has both hard-hitting offensive tech powers (Incinerate and Cryo Blast), plus Neural Shock (which paralyzes opponents), but has extremely low health and shields.
    • But the crowning glory has to be Kasumi Goto, a thief with fragile health and shields, along with the distinction of having one of the only melee abilities in the entire game. A very effective ability that she cloaks and uncloaks to use, but still.
    • Also Thane Krios, who is essentially Garrus with biotic powers instead of tech. Still very squishy.
    • And, of course, there's Jack. Her biotic powers may be cranked up to eleven, but they're all geared exclusively towards offense. She has one of the lowest defensive capabilities of any of the party members (only Mordin and Kasumi have lower values), and is likely to die if left to hold the line at the game's final battle. If you leave her behind and want to keep her alive, you'd better make sure she's loyal.
    • In Mass Effect 3, it is revealed that the Quarians have fitted their massive "Live Ships" with Dreadnought-sized mass accelerator cannons. This effectively makes them some of the most heavily armed ships in the galaxy. The fact that they carry no armor and little defensive armament, and that they also are the principal food source for the entire fleet, leaves most people who learn this utterly appalled. Joker actually drops this trope's name when explaining why it was such a terrible idea.
    • Mass Effect 3 multiplayer:
      • The drell and geth characters fall squarely into glass cannon territory with a healthy dose of Fragile Speedster to boot. Drell characters are blessed with one of the best racial passive powers (Drell Assassin), which pushes their weapon and power damage both to levels higher than most other race/class powers, and receive bonuses to their movement speed from Fitness, but have only half the normal barrier strength of most classes. The geth, on the other hand, abuse Hunter Mode to send their damage output through the roof (the Geth Infiltrator actually has the highest potential weapon damage of all playable classes) at the cost of half their maximum shields. The exceptions to the geth rule are the Trooper Soldier, which is...obscenely hard to kill, and the Geth Juggernaut which is exactly what is sounds like.
      • The Volus are an even more extreme example, having pitiful amount of health and not even able to use cover perfectly (although they are short enough for this normally not to be an issue). They can, however dish out an insane amount of damage, and have a lot of nice abilities (such as the ability to turn invisible) as race abilities, regardless of class.
    • The M-44 Hammerhead Hover Tank is fitted with jumpjets, a heavy seeker missile launcher, and a scanner that can do everything from reading computer discs to actively mining for 400 units of iridium. What it is not fitted with is armor made from something more resilient than old shoeboxes layered over bubble wrap. Which is a bit of a nuisance when you're under fire; expect to hear lots of alarms and occasionally burst into flames in any situation where you have to deal with enemies within direct fire range. Lampshaded when Cortez explains why you don't have one any more in 3 — the Hammerhead was undergoing retrofits on Earth in the hope of making it more durable when the Reapers came, and so the tank itself is presumed to lie under a few hundred tons of rubble.
    • Cerberus Nemesis snipers are capable of inflicting horrific long-range punishment, but a well-built Engineer can go right through their shield and health bars with one hit from Overload — and this is if they specced into the low-intensity crowd-control Overload rather than the high-damage, single-target version.
      • Or a Krogan player gets close enough to bash 'em with a Headbutt; or send them flying(!) with a shoulder tackle.
    • Infiltrator Shepard can wield sniper rifles that deal a staggering amount of damage (a properly outfitted Javelin can kill nearly anything through a wall and can one-shot Brutes from cloak), but has no native way to recover shields quickly and doesn't exactly have the most impressive health or shields of all time.
  • Might and Magic: Sorcerors and related classes tended towards this trope, as is traditional for mages in RPGs, though VII and VIII's Liches played with it a bit by combining low HP and an inability to use shields or armor heavier than leather with being the only way whatsoever to become immune to any school of magic, and VIII played with it further by giving liches access to the Regeneration skill.
  • While normally lacking in power, Shadow Ninjas in Sinjid: Shadow of the Warrior can become this through the use of Speed Strike, which does damage based on speed. The class tends to be Difficult, but Awesome; it's as durable as wet tissue paper, but its high speed allows it to avoid most attacks, and the right moveset makes for one powerful character. Just be careful around the Blood Spirit, who is considered to be its Achilles' Heel due to its powerful, unavoidable attacks and highly durable shield.
    • Agents are the only enemies in Shadow Of The Warrior with negative physical defense, but they make up for it with their above average (for the Human Portal, anyway) strength and speed. Their magic defense is decent, though.
    • The Anti Ninja hits hard, but has nonexistant defense. He doubles as a Fragile Speedster due to his incredible speed.
  • Undertale has Undyne, the Captain of the Royal Guard. Ironically, she wears of the heaviest armors in the game, but she's just a bit more resistant than Papyrus with it and even less when she doesn't wear it. However, she throws a near-endless amount of spears per second on your character to the point you actually need an armor that increases their Mercy Invincibility rather than their defense.
    • Mettaton NEO is an exaggeration of this trope, having the biggest attack stat in the game, but no defense at all.note 
    • The final boss of the "No Mercy/Genocide" path, Sans, combines this with Weak, but Skilled: he only has one hit point, and technically 1 ATK. Shame you literally can't hit him until the end of the fight, which is a lot of time for that 1 HP damage per frame to start piling up.
  • Ultima series: A Glass Sword is an insta-kill, but naturally shatters after one use. Clever in the games where these are limited, a bit of a Game-Breaker when you can have indefinite numbers.

    Wide Open Sandbox 
  • In Grand Theft Auto Online, a number of vehicles fit this description. To name a few, the Weaponised Tampa and Vigilante can be fitted with miniguns or rockets, but take just one hit from an explosive shell and you're toast.
  • Cole MacGrath of inFAMOUS can generate electrical grenades and rockets and pull lightning from the sky, but will still go down to some gun toting gangbangers. While his healing factor lets him recover from incredible abuse, attempting to get into a punching match with all but the weakest of Conduits will result in Cole dropping after the second hit.
  • Minecraft:
    • Cave spiders are half the size of and have two hearts less health of the regular spider (six versus eight), making them one of the least durable enemies in the game, but do just as much damage and inflict poison damage (in normal difficulty or above). Combined with the fact they almost always spawn in numbers, and that they can fit into smaller entrances thanks to their smaller size, this makes one of the most dangerous mobs in the game.
    • Ghasts deal heavy damage from both fireballs and the resulting explosions, even in Easy mode, and are very difficult to reach. However, they have rather low health (10, equivalent to 5 hearts), and if you manage to deflect one of its fireballs, it will invariably go down in one hit.
    • Charged creepers deal insane damage when they explode (on Hard mode, they do enough damage to theoretically knock the Ender Dragon below half of its maximum health). Even on Easy, their damage is over twice the player's health. However, a creeper needs to be struck by lightning to become charged, and is not immune to lightning damage (which is equivalent to a quarter of its maximum health).
  • When Alex Mercer of [PROTOTYPE] starts, he's a Lightning Bruiser. Nothing can hurt him much, and he kills with virtually no effort. Suddenly, only several missions in (after only a few following gaining the armor), his defense begins losing its value. He still kills like nobody's business and can tackle Thermobaric Tanks, helicopters and even entire buildings with little effort on offense, but even with an upgraded health bar he takes HUGE damage and begins realizing how squishy he truly is. The enemy also picks up on this as the game progresses, as he is often interrupted from healing by rocket fire. Although this is not so much that he is glass from the start — he can take multiple anti-tank missiles or tank shells after all — but that the enemy is upping its offensive game faster than he is his defensive.
  • Palworld:
    • The Player Character is themselves this. While they can dish out a lot of damage with guns, rocket launchers and grenades, they'll never be able to take as much punishment as their Pals. While most, it not all Pals will reach HP in the thousands very early on, the player character will usually only reach HP in the thousands at the midgame and that is assuming any of the stat points are put into HP during level up.
    • Syndicate Grenadiers have grenades that deal heavy damage in a large radius but don't have much more health than the common Thug or Hunter.
    • Syndicate Elites are equipped with rocket launchers that deal devastating area damage, but can't take any more punishment that a low-level Thug or Hunter.
    • Foxparks can deal a lot of damage on their own and when wielded as a flamethrower but has the second lowest HP stat in the game at 65.
    • Fuack has a base attack of 80, which is pretty high for an early game Pal, but their defense of 60 and their health of 60 are very low.
    • Fuddler has a base attack of 80, which is pretty high for an early game Pal, but their defense of 50 is the lowest in the game and their HP stat of 65 is low as well.
    • Tocotoco has a powerful partner skill that allows it to be used as a Grenade Launcher and learns Megaton Implode, the most powerful skill in the game. Its average defense is offset by the lowest HP stat in the game at 60. To top it off, its two most powerful attacks are suicide attacks.
    • Bushi has a very high attack stat of 125 but with merely average HP and defense (80), they'll go down quickly to powerful attacks.
  • Terraria:
    • Some enemies, such as the Meteor Head, deal unusually large amounts of damage for when they're encountered, but are otherwise fairly easy to kill.
    • The Crawltipede, an airborne worm summoned by the Solar Pillar, does an absurd amount of damage relative to most hardmode enemies and has very high mobility, but its tail takes ten times normal damage, making it extremely easy to kill if you can get a bead on it. However, it can only be damaged by hitting its tail.
    • On the player side, dedicated Magic users shape up as this as the game progresses, as Magic-oriented armor sets tend to have the lower defense than Ranged and Melee armors, while Magic weapons are capable of dealing large amounts of damage.


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