Lightning Bruiser / Tabletop Games

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• Clan Omnimechs from the BattleTech game. Faster, more armored, with more and meaner guns than the Inner Sphere counterparts. Champion of this was the Timber Wolf, a 75-ton heavy omnimech with a movement profile that was more akin to the lighter end of the Heavy 'Mech bracket for the Inner Sphere, or like the heavier end of the Medium bracket. It had nearly full armor for its class, and a sizeable chunk of remaining tonnage available for its modular weapon array. It became the poster 'mech of the Clan onslaught for this reason (also because it was a mainstay heavy 'mech of the most successful of the Invader Clans; Clan Wolf). Much of this came from the fact that the Inner Sphere was still recovering lost Star League technology at the time the Clans started invading, while the Clans had no such technological devolution and had since advanced past the grade of technology that the Star League had.
• In Blood Bowl, players with at least Strength 4 and Movement 6 generally fill this mold, especially if they also have a decent Agility. Most of them are balanced by being horribly expensive and limited in number. Vampires (Movement 6, Strength 4, Agility 4, Armour 8) are perhaps the most fastest bruisers of all, but suffer from Blood Lust that gives them a 1/6 chance of delaying whatever they're supposed to be doing in order to feed.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Barbarian in Edition 3.5 has the highest hit points available, can wear up to medium armor, Rage to get bonuses on taking and giving damage, and use any weapon they please, which is usually a double handed sword, bludgeoning tool, or axe. They're also the fastest unmodified class, and at higher levels react so fast that they can't be flanked by a group of enemies and/or a backstabbing Rogue. In 4th edition they keep their high hit points, speed and hitting power, but their defense is so poor that they're going to need those hit points. In 5th edition, they add their Constitution modifier to their AC, bringing them back to lightning bruiser territory, in addition to the Danger Sense ability at Level 2, which grants advantage on most Dexterity saving throws.
  • Rangers in 3.5 start out as a Fragile Speedster, capable two-weapon melee characters or archers that are still outpaced by dedicated archer and fighting classes, unless they take Weapon Finesse and use their high Dexterity stat to hit often with rapiers, shortswords or the like. At higher levels a Ranger can pick a combat style and gain additional feats for the bow or two-weapon fighting, elevating them to full Glass Cannon status. But give one a Mithril Breastplate they get all the defense bonuses of medium armor while retaining their Dexterity bonus in light armor, and with the right enchantments, accessories and feats a Ranger becomes a dual-wielding badass with an armor value usually associated with a Paladin, on top of enough skills to contribute in other ways.
  • Monks were intended to be this and combine high movement speed with a flurry of attacks, but unfortunately the 3.5 Edition Monk is often considered to be quite lacking at high levels of optimization. The 4th Edition Monk does somewhat better as a relatively effective striker.
  • The monstrous crab has a massive 66 HP, immunity to mind-affecting spells, and a devastating attack in which it pinches, then grapples the opponent for an average of 29 damage, which is enough to one-shot most PCs of that level. It can also keep pace with an unarmored barbarian, and outspeeds just about anything else in a land race, to say nothing of water. Oh, yeah, and it's CR 3. Have fun.
  • Amadeus the Lionheart (originating on the world of Brinecleft) was a literal Lightning Bruiser, a 1/4 Storm Giant Merchant-King One Man Army capable of taking on dozens of mooks, a psychic squid mayor, and hurled lightning at an Archmage and stabbed the other through the chest, all while moving ungodly fast.
  • Though the Tarrasque is best-known for its Nigh-Invulnerability and "Instant Death" Radius, it's pretty slow... but once per minute, it can Rush to boost its speed to 150 feet per round, three times faster than a horse. Pathfinder's take added the Powerful Leaper ability, letting it manage surprisingly huge jumps even when not using Rush. When it is using Rush and jumping? Yikes.
  • Zargon the Returner combines a wide suite of powerful melee attacks, including the ability to lash out with twelve tentacles, his horn and his acid-laced bite every run, with a large health pool kept topped off by a powerful Healing Factor and a considerable turn of speed. The only field where he's lacking is ranged combat.
• Lancer has the Lancaster, which is twice as large as most mecha, but is still one of the fastest in the game. Fittingly, it's a heavily armored Mechanical Horse.
• Pathfinder:
  • Fighters qualify as Lightning Bruisers thanks to their "Armor Training" ability, which allows them to increase the Max Dexterity Bonus of their armor (they get better at dodging stuff, even when they're covered in plates of steel), decrease the Armor Penalty (they get better at getting around weight issues armor has when preforming physical actions like swimming, jumping, climbing etc.) and most importantly, they can move at full tactical speed in armor. Relatively early, too (3rd level for Medium armor, 7th for Heavy armor). Essentially, a Fighter can sprint while wearing full plate armor before he's even halfway done with his class progression.
  • Leveling up, monks passively gain more speed, armor, and damage, until at max level an average Monk can move at 90 feet in less than 10 seconds and hit like a truck while still dodging most attacks coming their way.
  • The kineticist from Pathfinder can very quickly and easily count. While some may lack actual physical strength, such as telekenetics, this doesn't stop them from being able to both hit like a truck and take insane amounts of damage. Since they use their health as a resource, they are exceptionally difficult to kill, as doing enough damage to knock them out only puts them down for a nap.
• Exalted: since there's nothing whatsoever preventing you from buying, say, Melee, Athletics and Resistance (for Solars), Dexterity and Stamina (for Lunars), or Malfeas and Adorjan (for Infernals), these tend to emerge quite rapidly. A Malfean soak/damage build using Adorjani run-like-the-wind and hurricane flurry magic is something you do not want to meet in a dark alley — her ridiculously high Soak and Hardness mean all but the most brutal attacks will just bounce off, and she's likely able to outrun a Bugatti Veyron and rip off enormous rains of radioactive blows. Solars are just as unpleasant, albeit more focused on technical skill and proficiency than weird Primordial power.
  • In 2e, there is one Lunar charm that allows them to chase down literally anyone so long as they are deliberately pursuing them. Give that to someone who can turn into a tyrannosaurus, and the results are typically very messy.
• The Grav Tank in GURPS: Ultra-Tech can break the sound barrier, become nearly invisible and carries a massively powerful plasma cannon. If it does get hit the armor is the equivalent of several inches of hardened steel. Those stats are for a light tank.
• Speedsters in the Hero System can approach this. Obviously they are built for speed, but a high Dex score and Skill Levels in dodging can make them very difficult to hit, and the rules for adding velocity to melee damage mean that a speedster can, if he doesn't mind having a poor chance to hit, land a punch on somebody while going fast enough to circumnavigate the globe in a single combat phase.
• Magic: The Gathering: anything big with haste. Consider Predator Dragon, Hellkite Charger, and Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund for three draconic examples. (Admittedly, the "lightning" part only applies on the first turn you summon it, but the "bruiser" will remain indefinitely.)
  • Alternatively anything big with first strike might qualify, such as Akroma, Angel of Wrath. Who has haste too, so she fits by either metric.
  • Psychatog may be a meta-example: while it does not qualify for this trope by itself, its superb offensive and defensive capabilities let it assert aggressive pressure all by itself, which frees up space for more reactive cards to shut down an opposing deck before it can get rolling — and since it synergizes well with card draw and mill, it also fits well into decks designed to "go off" very quickly — and since it can consume an entire graveyard and hand to become a 20/21 in late game, can function as the central combo piece on its own.
• The nature of the New World of Darkness character-building system dictates these — damage is determined by Strength + skill, and speed is determined by Strength + Dexterity + 5. If you have high strength, you're quick and powerful.
• Old World of Darkness:
  • Werewolves were the eminent personification of this trope. All Werewolves (even the weaker Tribes and Auspices) became at least as strong as the strongest normal human ever when in their war-form. On top of this, the Werewolf super-stat "Rage" had the default effect of giving you more actions per round on a 1-action-per-point-of-Rage-spent basis.
  • Vampires also had the Brujah, whose Clan Disciplines included Celerity (going fast) and Potence (being super-strong).
• Very common trope in RPG games as your characters near endgame. Their very high levels usually negate the flaws and when the cannon becomes anything but glass you're in for some serious ass kicking.
• Victory in the Pacific: The Iowa class battleships are this in the game — they are the only battleships that have a speed rating equal to that of most cruisers and aircraft carriers, and they are also tied for the highest armor rating in the game — just like they were in real life.
• Warhammer:
  • Bretonnian knights are the not only the fastest of the game's heavy cavalry, but also the hardest hitting, and your fancy guns do jack against them. They can take almost anything head on, and the Grail Knights in particular are amongst the best troops in the game. Just don't expect that level of might from the peasant levy.
  • Blood Knights are similar to Grail Knights — supremely skilled knights who got superpowers, vampirism in this case. On the tabletop they are just about even, with Grail Knights being a touch more lightning and Blood Knights being a touch more bruiser. In story, Blood Knights tend to get stomped because Grail Knights are sometimes protagonists and and Blood Knights never are.
  • High Elf heavy cavalry, namely the Silver Helms and Dragon Princes, is lightning quick but still delivers tremendous blows. They're not as durable as Bretonnian knights, but have higher Initiative, giving them a better chance of killing their foe before getting hit in the first place.
  • Ogres on the charge have been described by their designer as "rolling a giant wrecking ball at the enemy." They can move 12" a turn, a unit can deal out 12 attacks in the first turn of combat, and each model has 3 wounds apiece. This is balanced out by a high points cost, low morale and dubious magical power.
  • The Lizardmen's mainline unit, Saurus Warriors (and the elite Temple Guard), start out as a Mighty Glacier with high durability and terrible Initiative, but judicious application of Light magic by a friendly Slann can make things a lot more vicious. A unit of Temple Guard powered up with Birona's Timewarp can move as fast as cavalry and dish out three Strength 5 attacks apiece which always strike first, allowing them to survive being charged in the rear by a horde of foes.
  • A lot of special characters are very strong and very quick. For example, Orion the King of Athel Loren and the Wood Elves proves that being the physical avatar of an elven god has its perks; he is overall one of the fastest units in the entire game with his Movement 9 and Initiative 9, but with Strength 5, Toughness 5, 4 Wounds and a magical Armour Save-piercing Strength 7 Spear of Kurnous, he can also take punches and hand them back with interest.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Any model with high Strength, Toughness and Initiative stats can be seen as one of these, be they special characters, monstrous creatures or walker vehicles like Dreadnoughts.
  • Space Marines are gene-boosted brutes encased in full suits of Powered Armor, both of which enable them to be faster and more agile than "mortal" humans. Logan Grimnar of the Space Wolves stands out for an incident during the Battle of the Fang, when his chapter was under attack by the Inquisition and Grey Knights — the Great Wolf was sufficiently pissed to be sprinting in Terminator armor, which is normally so heavy that even Astartes find it cumbersome and slow.
  • This is a trait of the Eldar's heaviest vehicles. They won't have an Imperial super-heavy tank's endurance, but they'll be able to dish out just as much if not more firepower while moving at great speed. Eldar super-heavy grav-tanks like the Scorpion or Cobra are fast skimmers just like their mainline tanks, sport cannons the length of train cars, and are protected by holo-fields that make them next to impossible to hit when on the move. Even their Titans share these qualities, and the Revenant is not only fast and agile enough to sprint across the battlefield, it has jump-jets allowing it to make 36" leaps across the tabletop.
    • 6th Edition turned Saimhann Eldar from "complete joke" to "Difficult, but Awesome" through this trope. Saimhann is a Craftworld that specializes in Wildrider bikers, grav-tanks and flying infantry on lightning raids; it won't have much in the way of numbers or real heavy-hitting, but your units are actually quite tough by Eldar standards, and everything in your army can move 24-36" and give the finger to terrain that would impede other armies and block them in. On particularly large and clustered tables, Saimhann biker armies would be impossible to keep under control.
    • Outside of vehicles, Eldar look like they should be Fragile Speedsters due to their lithe builds, but their highly-efficient muscular systems make them just as strong as an average human, while their reflexes mean that we might as well be moving in slow motion. Eldar who fully develop their combat potential can be terrifying — in Void Stalker, the protagonists initially believed they could hear rain falling, but it was getting gradually louder. Then they realized the "rain" was the footfalls of Jain Zar, Phoenix Lord of the Howling Banshees, sprinting at full speed towards them.
  • The Tau XV104 "Riptide" Battlesuit is the race's first proper Mecha, with the best defenses of any of their ground units, enormous weapon systems capable of wiping out entire enemy squads, and a jet pack that allows it to run circles around enemy vehicles and walkers. It's even faster if it dumps charges from its Nova Reactor into its boosters for that turn.
  • Necron ground forces can cheat to pull this off and simply teleport incredibly durable Skelebots right into the enemy's faces, but in space they're a more legitimate example of this trope. Their ships are not only the toughest in the game, but also have inertialess drives that allow them to outrun and outmaneuver even Eldar fleets. In Battlefleet Gothic the Necron fleet's only weakness is a comparative lack of firepower, a drawback not seen in the rest of the background — in Cain's Last Stand one Necron escort ship is able to ambush and wipe out an entire enemy fleet by itself, before they have time to react.
  • Ork Warbosses who don't bother wearing Mega Armour are treated as this. 10 feet and several hundred pounds of sociopathic muscle, incredibly strong, tough-as-nails and deceptively fast, they're one of the few things in the universe able to give Space Marines a run for their money.
  • While most of Tyranid units fall under Crippling Overspecialization category, their Hive Tyrants are genetically engineered to be this trope. A monster that is few stores tall, yet can move as fluidly as profilic Fragile Speedster, and still packs quite a punch. To make matters worse, damn things can even grow wings...
  • Chaos Space Marines have three main sources of this. Under Fast Attack, there's Nurgle Bikers, who are Toughness 6, yet can cover a lot of ground quickly with turbo-boosting. Under HQ, there's the Daemon Prince, a potentially flying murder machine with viciously high Initiative and Weapon Skill stats, plus Strength 6 and Toughness 5. For Heavy Support, there's the Maulerfiend: basically a mutant Dreadnought, minus the Helbrute's bad case of crazy and with no ranged weapons, but plus a movement rate on par with wolves or cavalry, a 5+ invulnerable save, and the It Will Not Die special rule, allowing it to recover hull points. The Maulerfiend's basic job is to run up to enemy light to medium tanks and punch them to death.
• In Arcadia Quest, the Pets expansion includes the villain Vexia. Vexia's villain ability can make her the single-handed most powerful Major Villain in the entire game if she has 4 Wild Pets surrounding her (which she can summon with crit rolls). If surrounded by 4 Wild pets, she can have 17 health (surpassing even the Elder versions of every Dragon), 7 Defense (beating Malkhor's defense of 5), and 9 damage (which is so high that she matches against the dragons Mog'Dor and Rotwailer). If a pet is removed from the board, she can replace it using her ability. Once she gets running, she becomes almost impossible to fight head on without getting killed or healing/defending any wound that comes at her.
• Mobile Frame Zero: To balance out the range advantages of other weapons, melee deals damage more easily and is not affected by cover, meaning that a brawl will tend to get very lethal very quickly, and to allow melee mechs to close before they're shot to pieces, a mobile frame with no ranged weapons benefits from a free green D8 for determining move distance, essentially providing it with a movement system that is free, doesn't take up a spot, and on average will roll 1 higher than a normal system. This means that companies that need a mech to run touchdowns on damaged opponents and bully other frames off objectives will often reach for a configuration known as the Brawler: a design with two melee weapons and two protective systems such as force fields or armour plates, which can close alarmingly quickly with the enemy, deals a lot of damage when it gets there, and is essentially rolling 4 dice and picking the highest to determine what its defence looks like.

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