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Dark Cure Mint: The difference between me and you is that your powers only protect you!
(later, when Dark Mint is killed)
Cure Mint: The difference between me and you is that I was protected.
The Barrier Warrior is a character with the Magic And Powers necessary to create Deflector Shields or Beehive Barriers to protect themselves and sometimes others. The Barrier Warrior fights enemies with an emphasis not on destruction, but on protecting, and their personality reflects this by being kind and caring, with Technical Pacifist tendencies and sometimes Healing Hands to go with their defensive abilities. It should come as no surprise that characters with this ability as their main or only power are, you guessed it, heroes. Usually, they're The Chick, a Squishy Wizard or The Smart Guy. In video games they specialize in protecting and aiding team mates, or "buffing", rather than damaging enemies.
Despite these good intentions and potent abilities, they'll pretty much suck at actually doing stuff, like beating enemies and worse, protecting their allies! The problem is that their transferable Nigh Invulnerability and ease resisting attacks that Could Have Been Messy makes them the perfect target for The Worf Effect. As soon as a new bad guy shows up, their shields will pose all the resistance of wet tissue paper to their weakest Energy Blasts.
Less commonly, the Barrier Warrior will be a fierce fighter on an equal footing with other more aggressively powered cast members. This is done either by cleverly using his shield to trick or outmaneuver enemies, help teammates, or using it in conjunction with other fighting skills and abilities to actually beat up enemies. A barrier could also be sent forward to attack enemies - if it can stop bullets, it's going to hurt if it runs into your face.
As a power, generating Deflector Shields is much like Flight; in theory it's an awesome power that anyone would like, but like Flight it has become a dime a dozen and pretty lame. Most shows give every character this ability as a secondary power/skillset from a characters' main abilities (such as a pyrokinetic creating walls of fire, or a cryokinetic making ice walls). It's made even more useless since it's easy to deflect Ki Attacks with other Ki Attacks, and techniques like Deadly Dodging are around to avoid most attacks.
On the flip side, writers who notice this have used Re Power to make these characters incredibly versatile and lethal as well, since it functions very similarly to a Green Lantern Ring.
Not to be confused with Barrier Maiden, though the two can overlap if the Maiden's method of containment is via forcefield.
Compare Stone Wall or Magic Knight.
Examples
Anime
- Komachi/Cure Mint in Yes! Precure 5. In theory, somewhat limited in usage compared to other forcefielders, since she can only produce Mint Protection and Mint Shield around herself rather than just anywhere. In practice, they're strong enough to make Mint the team Worf, can provide pathways for her teammates' powers, and have no apparent limit on range, and the Mint Shield in particular does damage on contact and has been used as a massive Kamehame Hadoken. In season two, though, she loses these abilities, which are replaced with the more traditional attack Emerald Saucer.
- Mai from Mai-HiME can use her Element to create short-range forcefields for herself and her friends. Natsuki also gets this ability in the manga version (hers is ice to counteract Mai's fire).
- Though considering Mai's power mainly consists of pyrokinetic and summoning a giant dragon with its very own Wave Motion Gun, her shield does not really make her a Barrier Warrior.
- The main characters of Kekkaishi. Comes with the handy bonus that they can make the barriers implode, destroying whatever they made it surround.
- They also use some particularly brilliant extensions of standard barrier skills, like a barrier that eats away at anything and everything except the user. And it's implied there are far more powerful barrier techniques out there...
- Or they can use their barriers for more mundane but still very useful combat purposes. For example, if an enemy is too fast to be captured by a full-sized barrier, simply make a smaller, faster one around a piece of their body or even their vitals. If that's not an option, a skilled kekkaishi can instead generate long, narrow barriers that skewer enemies like spears.
- Orihime Inoue from Bleach. Her powers manifest as six fairies: three generate the shield, which is extremely powerful, two for the healing shield, which can resurrect the dead, and one for attack, which is really, really weak. It's explained that her attack power is related to the strength of her heart, and she doesn't have any will to fight aggressively, so if she ever did get serious, really serious — watch out.
- Subverted in a later episode when said attacking fairy was almost destroyed by Arrancar.
- Played straight again, when she uses her defensive shields to protect Ichigo from none other than Ulquiorra and later, to bring Ichigo's almost lifeless body down without further harm
- Deconstructed in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Each Eva and major villain fight through the use of "absolute terror" fields, powerful forcefields that can deflect bullets and even nuclear weapons, and can only be reliably disabled through a stronger "absolute terror" field or through ridiculously big guns. Rather than being pacifistic team players, though, the Eva are frighteningly violent, and the strength of the absolute terror field comes from the desire for isolation.
- Yuuno Scrya of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha doesn't have a Device like the other mages in the cast, and barrier powers are a dime-a-dozen in the series... but apparently, he's just that good with them. Good enough to hold his own against an ancient warrior-mage equipped with a powerful Armed Device, who had just soundly defeated the titular Ace of the series. And he does this while simultaneously working to crack the imprisoning barrier his team was trapped inside. Yuuno is also one of the few heroes with Healing Hands.
- In Konjiki No Gash Bell, Tio specializes in protective and healing spells (and has only a single weak offensive spell until volume 20, anyway).
- There's also Danny, an early character whose only shown ability is to heal himself. Despite this, he comes awfully close to being a Badass Normal, taking out guys with guns without even using a spell. Eventually, he does get shot, but it only takes a first-level spell to get him up again, hinting that had he survived, he'd be nigh invincible. However, he gets his book burned not in battle, but in protecting a museum artifact. Fans speculate that had this not happened, Danny may have made it to the end, although this is somewhat balanced by having his book reader be a little old man. In the manga, when Gash's book first glows gold giving him the ability to use other demon's spells, it is Danny that saves him with his one and only spell, completely healing the thrashing that Gash received at the hands of Clear Note.
- Suzumiya Haruhi: Yuki Nagato tends to fight by slamming people with forcefields, although this may be due to the fact that both times we see her fight, she's also protecting noncombatants. This is in contrast to her Evil Counterpart Ryouko, who prefers various means of stabbing the hell out of people (spears thrown with telekinesis, regular ol' knives, whatever.)
- The Distortion Fields on Martian Successor Nadesico are also useful for offense (and like most Aestivalis weaponry, are an Homage to Neon Genesis Evangelion, above, albeit not as creepy). The most generally powerful attack the Humongous Mecha pilots use involves angling their Distortion Field to a point and ramming the enemy with it, a technique named "Gekigan Flare" as a reference to Nadesico's Show Within A Show. When Aestivalis appear in Super Robot Wars, the Gekigan Flare (or combination attacks involving it) is usually the Aestivalis's Limit Break. Gekiganger fanboys Akito and Gai usually have the Double Gekigan Flare as a Combination Attack. Given that Gai usually survives much longer in a Super Robot Wars game than he did in his own series, you have a surprising amount of opportunities to use it. (It never did get used by Akito and Gai in the series, because they hadn't seen the Short Anime Movie that introduced it yet.)
- The LambdaDriver-equipped Arm Slaves in Full Metal Panic are another example of mecha using force fields offensively, although they verge on variable-shape Energy Weapons.
- The SDF-1 was given a barrier early on: the only problem is that they didn't have the energy reserves to power it up enough to cover more than a tiny circle of the ship. The solution was to create a series of 'pinpoint barriers' controlled by trackballs handled by the Bridge Bunnies (not the principal Bridge team, but other three girls specially trained for this purpose). The Number Two then came up with the Daedalus Maneuver, which involved putting all the shields around the Daedalus (which was originally a sea-going carrier acting as both a fist and a docking bay) so it could punch through the enemy's hull, then open up and unload a large quantity of missiles inside the enemy's guts.
- Later models of the fighter craft mecha also were given Pinpoint Barriers, and could execute a powerful punch in much the same manner.
- Likewise, later models of the Macross-class warships. The original Daedalus Attack was thus renamed to Macross Attack.
- Halfway through the original series, the SDF Macross engineers found a way to produce an omnidirectional barrier that could spread outwards, like a sphere, to cover the entire ship. Unfortunately, the feedback from enemy attacks caused it to overload and explode violently, destroying a sizable chunk of Ontario and resulting in the Macross being forbidden from entering Earth's atmosphere again. By the Final Battle, however, it had been perfected into a fully-functional shield.
- Nozomi Daichi from The Daichis: Earth Defense Family uses an umbrella that generates force fields.
- Although they don't do it often, high-level warriors in Dragon Ball Z can generate shields with their ki to deflect or nullify enemy attacks.
- Mage-type characters in CLAMP works are typically capable of this. Most notable:
- The Shinkirou, Lelouch's Mid Season Upgrade in Code Geass R2, is equipped with a battleship-class Beehive Barrier in order to better suit his combat role as head tactician/strategist - and to cover his mediocre-at-best piloting skills. Of course, it's also got a rather powerful Chest Blaster as its primary weapon.
- Megumi Kurogane of Gate Keepers is of the versatile variety, creating giant walls to block enemy attacks, as well as using said walls to crush them. This power is inverted into a piercing ability after her Face Heel Turn.
- Aeka from Tenchi Muyo can generate force fields, and also can summon floating wooden blocks that encircle a person and restrain them. Aeka uses her sheilds as an offensive weapon by flying towards the enemy. When properly motivated, her sheilds are large and powerful enough to shatter an entire corridor.
- Katsuhito - Tenchi's grandfather, has similar shields, but he only uses them for defense, prefering the Tenchi-ken for offense.
- Tenchi has similar powers, but do to his lack of training he rarely uses them. The only time we see him use them in the original series was wrapped around a fist to attempt a killer blow against Kagato while parrying his sword. However, Tenchi's ultimate power - the Light Hawk Wings - are massive shields that can block nearly anything. After unleashing them he fights with the Light Hawk Sword, which is really just one of the shields shaped like a sword.
- All of the Royal families Tree Ships also have the light hawk wings. Aeka's has three, but the Grand Ship Tsunami (who is also their goddess) can form a full 10 wings which is powerful enough to stop an Earth Shattering Kaboom.
- In Mahou Sensei Negima, the previous generation group Ala Rubra had a character (possibly named Filius Zect) who acted as the group's Barrier Warrior. The current generation group Ala Alba has Asuna (though main lead Negi does tend to do this to protect his students) who has the ability to cancel magic a BFS that serves as a powerful shield.
- Haruna also sometimes uses her Art Initiates Life artifact to create shields.
- Also, most mages have a personal shield active all the time. By chapter 141, Asuna has learned to attack in teams: She blows the shield away right before Negi or Kuu Fei hits.
- Raquel Casull's barrier spells demonstrate that sometimes the best offense is a good defense. Though she does employ standard offensive magic as well, both for attacking and cooking.
- Acao from Jinki Extend can crush metal with her fields.
Comic Books
- Susan Storm aka The Invisible Woman in the Fantastic Four, who was given force fields because mere invisibility isn't all that super when your kid brother Johnny can lob fireballs.
- As a veteran superhero, she's gotten quite good at using her powers offensively.
- This editor remembers her threatening to use them to create a brain embolism/aneurism at one point.
- The Invisible Woman has easily taken out the other members of her team with force fields, as well as knocking out both The Hulk and She Hulk by cutting off their air. This was mocked in an issue of Exiles, implying she brags about the feat often.
- Dr. Doom has stated, on a number of occasions, that Sue is easily the most powerful member of the team. This is backed up by a few of higher end feats, which include killing a Celestial, who are essentially space-roaming gods. She is, to date, the only Earth-based Marvel hero to accomplish this.
- Subverted with Captain America, whose sole weapon - his iconic indestructible shield - is, when thrown, a great offensive weapon against most people.
- Brainiac 5 of the Legion Of Super Heroes, who uses his force field and martial arts training to make up for no powers in the comics. In the show, he's a Do Anything Robot and a Telescoping Robot, whose Beehive Barrier is the least of what he can do.
- Booster Gold, late of the Justice League Of America, is a huge subversion. He's a pompous dimwit with super strength and a one-track mind, and he rarely even thinks of using his force field in critical situations.
- He's been using it more recently and in more creative ways, such as wiring up his forcefield with his blasters to blast the area in a burst so he wouldn't get mindcontroled. One of the reasons he did't use it so often was because it might weaken his immune system.
- In The DCU, Argent and the various Green Lanterns tend to fight like this, especially Hal Jordan and the Justice League Unlimited John Stewart. While their powers are effective Silver and Green Lantern Rings, respectively, Plot Induced Stupidity tends to leave them as walking walls of light.
- The Samaritan of Astro City manipulates the "empyrian field", which is strong enough to repulse a tidal wave.
- Zhantee in Elf Quest gains the power
 to shield his friends from danger after being exposed to the power of the Palce of the High Ones.
- In his very first appearance, Magneto created a forcefield around an entire military base to keep the X-Men away. Occasionally, writers still remember that he can do that.
- The X-Men villain Unus the Untouchable is a villainous example of a Barrier Warrior, with the mutant power of being able to project an impenetrable force field around himself. Rather than being kind and caring, Unus acts like a Jerkass because he thinks his power prevents anyone from being able to stop him. He's generally right...until the superhero he's fighting finds some way to either circumvent the field's protection or comes up with a creative way of shutting it off, at which point he's easy prey. Turns into Blessed With Suck when he loses control of his field and suffocates to death when it grows so strong it repels air.
Film
- Since Invisible Woman has this, so does Shrinking Violet Violet Parr (though a more limited version). She uses it for trapping mooks, cutting off electrical circuits, and as a super-hamster ball.
- Don't forget "That's my girl" when Violet protects her entire family when a plane falls on them.
- A good few scenes with Neo have him using this power.
Video Games
- While his personality is a total blank, Ness from Earth Bound has the power set and is arguably an example who is also The Hero. Due to his party's ability setup, Ness is a case where this actually helps him shake off enemy attacks instead of receiving The Worf Effect.
- In City Of Heroes the Defender archetype uses this type of powers, and shares weaker versions of them with the Controller; additionally villains get their own versions in Corruptors and Masterminds. Four of the power sets available work primarily by putting shields of some kind on other characters, including Force Fields, Ice Shields, Sonic Barriers and Thermal Radiation Shields. The other Buff/Debuff sets vary widely but several include auxiliary barrier powers. All of these various powers are so potent that a team composed heavily of support characters can truly be Nigh Invulnerable.
- Anarchy Online has this in the Soldier profession, who can not only create Deflector Shields around themselves, but also around others. However, the profession is focused around dealing ranged damage to an enemy.
- Dr. Akihiko Sakata, I presume?
- Guarlions (and similar machines) in Super Robot Wars Original Generation can generate a forcefield when moving at high speeds. Naturally, one of their strongest attacks is to ram things hard. Similarly, the Super Robot Giganscudo will also use its fields to slam into the enemy, either when using its massive weight as a weapon, or by grabbing the enemy from a distance and slamming it into its field-shrouded mass.
- In the MMORPG Flyff, an entire class, the Assist, as well as its higher-level counterpart the Ringmaster, is dedicated to buffing and healing.
- World Of Warcraft has several classes capable of becoming Barrier warriors. Priests can make protective barriers out of an allies' soul, with some priests actually enabling these shields to reflect damage. Paladins go one step further into the Defensive variety, able to make themselves invulnerable to damage, make an ally invulnerable to Physical damage, or Sacrifice themselve to make an ally immune to absolutely everything but removing them from Combat. Finally, Warriors can turn their shields into fully offensive weapons.
- The Golem Asgard from the Wild ARMs series specializes in barriers, and is supposedly the defensive, friendly golem. However, since its barriers disintegrate anything that touches them, they're primarily used offensively, sometimes leading to One Hit Kill attacks in games where you fight Asgard. Barrier Fist! Barrier Storm!
- Speaking of Golems, the Summoned Monster Golem from Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, and Final Fantasy Tactics will stop any incoming physical attack with its huge rock (or metal, in VI) hands for a little while after being summoned. Similarly, Shadow's dog Interceptor will randomly shield him from damage, only to come back and savage the enemy in return. And in Final Fantasy IX, the primary duty of the great Eidolon Alexander is protect the castle, and city of Alexandria, with its gigantic angel wings.
- In nearly all of his incarnations, the Carbuncle summon is the magical counterpart to Golem, projecting a reflect shield over your party to deflect most magic spells.
- Nearly all of the support powersets in City Of Heroes include some way of providing your teammates with protective shields, the most straightforward being Force Fields. These are paired either with a ranged offensive powerset, or one that allows you to control your enemies in some way. (or in the case of the Mastermind, a bunch of henchmen to use the buffs on!)
- One of Princess Zelda's moves in the Super Smash Bros games is Nayru's Love, which generates a crystal-shaped force field around her for a few seconds to deflect other attacks.
- Several rings in zOMG! are shield based, but the closest thing to an outright barrier warrior is the Chef (yes, chef) Ring Set. In addition to receiving a natural armor bonus, the Chef also has access to Teflon Spray (one of the most useful Armor Buffs in the game), Pot Lid (which can deflect ranged attacks with ease), and Meat (which can nearly double your maximum health). Due to the energy based nature of all zOMG! skills, it could be said that the Chef set is actually summoning G'hi Shields to protect his/herself and his/her allies. Or, you could pretend that he/she is really spraying Teflon all over themselves. It's that kind of game.
- Kirby has three different Barrier Warrior powers that he can absorb. The Stone power allows him to change into an invincible rock that can fall onto people, the Mirror power can spray harmful crystals that reflect enemies' attacks back on them, and the Umbrella power shields against Death From Above and has a hefty swat.
- Some Pokemon moves work as barriers, such as Protect and Detect, which prevent all damage, but usually tend to fail when used two turns in a row. However, against the Pokemon Slaking, which is extremely powerful but can only attack every other turn, such a Pokemon is Nigh Invulnerable. There's also Reflect and Light Screen, which temporarily halve the damage dealt by physical and special moves, respectively. However, there are certain moves that can break through these barriers. The move Feint will hit a Pokemon that is using Protect or Detect (but won't hit a foe that isn't), and Brick Break and Defog will get rid of Reflect and Light Screen. Defog also gets rid of Safeguard (protects against status conditions) and Mist (protects against stat lowering).
- Woodman, Skullman, Starman, Plantman, Junkman, Jewelman, and Enker from the Mega Man series. Jewelman's is the best. The Mirror Buster, as Megaman uses it, is actually better than Enker's version, as it has a 180 degree angle of reflection and doesn't damage Megaman when it's used.
- One of Kingdom Hearts' Power Trio, Goofy, uses a shield as his weapon. He is also capable of carrying the most items (useful for healing) and has a very high HP. In Kingdom Hearts II, his attacks are very obviously directed at keeping enemies busy, or making them easier to hit, without doing any real damage.
- In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind the demigod Vivec's main job is maintaining magical barriers that hold back the blight. He doesn't particularly like his job, but has no choice particularly since he was one of the ones responsible for creating the problem in the first place.
- In Mass Effect, all combat armor uses "kinetic barriers" known colloquially as "shields" to intercept bullets. Most characters get the Shield Boost ability, which rapidly recharges shields in combat. Tech based characters get omni-tools and the Electronics talent, which add to shields (especially Electronics). But the biotic characters get the Barrier talent, which generates temporary shields from their own bodies. Maxed out, Barrier grants nearly twice the shielding as any other character and lasts nearly as long as it takes to cast it again. However, the three biotic classes can also get an ability Barrier Specilization, which dramatically lengthens the ability's duration and shields, while providing constant regeneration. The end result is that a Squishy Wizard style character can take as much dakka as the game cares to throw at him, with only a handful of attacks posing any kind of threat even at the highest difficulty levels.
Webcomics
- Young Anja Donlan of Gunnerkrigg Court had the ability to create spherical purple shields. Later, she combines this power with an etheric computer (designed by her and her husband, Donald), expanding its usefulness: using it, Donald gains the ability to create shields, and Anja is able to bind demons.
Western Animation
- Prior to the Time Skip, Gwen of Ben 10 had luck powers and various Elemental Powers over water and wind that often didn't work very well. Post Time Skip, Gwen stops using all of those and instead just creates pink forcefields for shields and bludgeoning.
- In The Spectacular Spider Man, Shocker's costume generates Deflector Shields as a secondary power, allowing him to survive a building's collapse.
- Arguably, Ratchet from Transformers Animated. His main ability comes from his wrist-mounted magnetic field generators, which he often uses to create shields against enemy attacks. They're a bit more malleable than the average Deflector Shields, though, and they can can just as easily toss enemies around or push objects into them.
- In the original Transformers, Trailbreaker also had force field powers.
- Toa Tahu wears the Mask of Shielding, which protects him against attack by creating a bubble shield (which is covered in Instant Runes in the Flash animations but not in the movies) capable of protecting him from a waterfall of lava. When he becomes a Toa Nuva, the mask gains the ability to protect others as well. However, it does not protect against attacks that the wearer is unaware of, and sometimes you can get around it by doing something that would not be interpreted as an attack - for example, Nuhvok-Kal managed to reach through the shield with the power of his gravity weapon and cause Tahu to faceplant, bringing the shield down.
- Tahu's also a subversion as far as personality is concerned, as he's as Hot Blooded as they come and not prone to running and hiding behind cover (though he's mellowed a bit in that regard).
- Eric the Cavalier from the animated Dungeons And Dragons is issued a shield that projects an invulnerable force field.
- Maguro of Sushi Pack can use her psychic powers to create a force field that's large enough to shield the whole group, and strong enough to keep anyone under it from being crushed, even by beings much, much larger than she is.
Roleplaying Games
- The Monk class from third edition Dungeons And Dragons has good defenses and various other abilities that let him protect, heal, or immunize himself from harm - but is capable of doing very little else that would actually be useful in an adventuring party (poor offense, poor scouting abilities due to lack of stealth, mediocre damage and mostly ineffective debuffs). This is the subject of frequent flame wars on certain message boards.
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