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alt title(s): Glass Cannons 
We killed it with a pebble.
It's like I'm a cannon made out of glass. Like a... Y'know a dainty figurine so ornately decorated you can't imagine how something so fragile manages to survive in this brutal, ugly world... And it makes you weep.
In short: He can dish it out, but he can't take it. Similar to (but distinct from) the Squishy Wizard and the Fragile Speedster, the Glass Cannon is characterized by insane attack power coupled with pathetic defensive ability.
Prevalent in RPGs and fighting games, as the cast needs to be big enough that "takes hits like a chump" becomes a viable character trait. Artillery units in Real Time Strategy and Turn Based Strategy games also tend to have this trait, as they're meant to be far away from combat, or at least in the back of the formation.
See also: Competitive Balance and PVP Balanced. Make the Glass Cannon incapable of taking any punishment at all and you've got a One Hit Point Wonder. Glass Cannons often overlap with the Fragile Speedster; characters of that type, who put out high damage and dodge most incoming attacks but go down quickly if they do get hit, are sometimes called "Glass Ninjas." Another type of Glass Cannon is the Squishy Wizard. Contrast Stone Wall, as well as Lightning Bruiser who can dish out and still take it like a man.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- Fate's Sonic Drive form in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS. It improves on her original Sonic Form by giving her a lot of oomph to complement the speed increase, boosting her magic powers to astounding levels and letting her access Bardiche's Riot Zamber form. But much like the original Sonic Form, all of this comes at the cost of armor, so all it'll take is one good hit to make her fall.
- Not that it proves to be much of a detriment; so far nobody's managed to land that hit.
- Hayate has also shades of this : her spells range from nuclear explosion to... bigger nuclear explosion, but it comes with looooooong casting time and inability to take hits. She even said Caro would win against her in one-on-one.
- Manga example from Mahou Sensei Negima: most mages tend to be like this, which is why they have partners to guard them their opponents while they prepare their big spells. The mark of the highest level mages is that they grow tough enough to move past this and are powerful enough not to need the protection.
- The Big Bad of the final arc of Ranma 1/2 has powers bordering on a Person Of Mass Destruction and he can tank Ki Attacks, but a rather pampered life has lead him to be rather weak against physical attacks. Of course this is just compared to the completely Made Of Iron fighters in most of the series (he was called a wuss for being moderately injured by a boulder... being thrown by tornado winds that were drilling into the ground and altering the course of an underground river).
- Cologne has some elements of this as well. Given that she's one of the two most prominent Miniature Senior Citizens and a very Old Master (three hundred years in the anime), this might be somewhat explainable.
- Pikachu fits this trope well in Pokemon. Massively powerful attacks? Check. Tendency to go down quickly in a fight? Oh yeah.
- Louise from Zero No Tsukaima. Just like the Mahou Sensei Negima example, her partner/familiar is here to protect her while she prepares her insanely powerful spells.
- The Union Flags did this in Season one of Gundam 00. In order to move at speeds that would be able to keep up with the Gundams, they reduced the density of the armor so that they could increase their speed. However, this proves to be a subversion in that the armor was more or less redundant since the Gundams could still take them down in one hit even if they had full armor. The armor would have mattered if they had been used to take on other nations but against the Gundams who had freaking beam weapons, no amount of armor they could provide would be enough.
Board Games
- There is an old (board and miniatures) gaming expression called the fuzzy wuzzy fallacy (after the Rudyard Kipling poem). Basically it states that a unit's effectiveness goes up proportionate to the square root of any increase in firepower (provided the defense stays the same). For example, the above Mech has roughly 3.5 times the firepower of the old version. FW numbers say that it's about 1.87 (the root of 3.5) times as effective as the old one, given that both die just as easy (and will draw fire like no-one's business).
Comic Books
- Many telepaths in X-Men, such as Professor X, have powerful psychic powers but very weak physical attacks, and aren't of much use against opponents immune to telepathy (like robots).
- Of course, we all know that Professor X's true weakness is stairs.
- Lampshaded in Evolution: He tells Scott that no matter the challenge they can be overcome. Cut to him at the top of a flight of stairs. "Of course some challenges are easier to overcome than others."
- Storm would be another good example from the X-Men. Her mutant power is weather control, and when used to maximum she's been suggested/shown to be capable of completing wrecking a continent, but she's otherwise just a normal human.
- In his first few appearances as Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner would often be subdued by a single blow to the back of the head. And he's not the only one; Hal Jordan also fell victim to this more than a couple times. But if you couldn't get behind him stealthily like that, he will fuck you up.
- Ah, this explains that scene from Justice League when Batman took out Sinestro with a well-timed Batarang...
- Or the scene in Batman The Brave And The Bold when he K.O.s Guy Gardner with "One punch!"
- That's an homage to the late 80's Justice League comic where Batman does the same thing to Guy.
- The Golden Age Green Lantern was prone to this. But then, when your special vulnerability is wood, a mook with a baseball bat or chair leg has less trouble getting through your force field.
- One time Batman shoved Kyle, telling him to back off, when Kyle put up his hand to use his ring, he discovered Batman had lifted it during the shove.
- Humpty Dumpty in the Fables Spin Off Jack of Fables is an almost literal example, being a cannon that was Bowdlerized into being an egg man.
- Zatanna of the DCU can kill people with a (backwards) word (not that she ever has IIRC, she is a DCU hero). She could turn them into pudding snacks with a (backwards) sentence. Only the stronger magical, divine, or cosmic beings in the DC universe can resist her powers. However, she isn't any more durable than most humans and can be taken down with a single well-placed punch. Overlaps with Squishy Wizard. n Identity Crisis it is even explicitly mentioned in the narration-bubble: She is the most powerful member of the team, if she can get the words out. Slade Wilson (Deathstroke the Terminator, who is possibly the only person for whom that name is not overkill) pokes her the stomach, so lightly that it does not even hurt that much, but once she begins to vomit from the damage to her liver she is out of the fight.
- Prism, an on and off member of the X-Men villain Mr. Sinister's Marauders, is literally made of glass. He can store light and energy (such as sunlight or Cyclop's optic blasts) and redirect it to devastating effect. But he is still made of freaking glass. Jean Grey killed him once by throwing him into a wall (not even that hard).
- Sizzle from the latest Legion Of Superheroes continuity is practically a literal cannon, needing a steady power source (ammo) to feed her energy projection abilities. The awkwardness in having to both provide power and cover to Sizzle while watching your own back is the reason she was sent to the Legion Auxiliary along with her Stone Wall friend Turtle.
Fan Works
- In An Entry With A Bang!, the marauding pirates with their Battletech... uh, tech... are somewhat confused by the fact that while Clancy-Earth has highly effective BVR capability, their warmachines can't take hits worth a damn.
- On the other end of the scale, C-Earth technicians are utterly baffled as to why BT doesn't have a gun capable of blowing apart a mech in one shot, since as far as they're concerned, "Any gun that isn't a One Hit Kill isn't worth having."
Literature
- In The Dresden Files Harry mentions that some wizards are like this, sacrificing defensive magics for overwhelming attacks, and wonders if his opponent is one of them. The guy then blocks the car and Harry realizes that no, he's just outmatched.
- In the Honorverse there are several ships like this. At one end of the extreme are outdated Solarian Navy ships which put more focus on offensive weapons than counter missiles and point defence lasers. At the other end of the extreme are Maya's Arsenal ships which are capable of carrying thousands of long range missiles, but are just converted freighters and have no defence at all.
Live Action Television
- In an episode of Lois And Clark'', Lex Luthor creates a boxer that he believes can take on Superman. The boxer delivers a flurry of punches that stagger Superman. For a moment it looks like Superman is actually on the ropes, but then he simply flicks the boxer in the forehead and knocks him out.
Tabletop Games
- The Eldar and Dark Eldar of Warhammer 40000 straddle the blurred line between this and Fragile Speedster.
- In tabletop, Eldar are fast and fragile. Dark Eldar are even faster and more fragile. Dark Eldar is more of Glass Cannon than Eldar, given the amount of firepower that squads of Dark Eldar can pump out for relatively cheap cost.
- Also in tabletop, the Space Marine Thunderfire cannon. As an artillery piece, anything shooting at it has a 50/50 chance of hitting either it or the Techmarine manning it. Hitting the Tech is not a huge issue, with a 2+ armour save, but if the cannon itself is hit, either a penetrating hit or glanceing hit will completly destroy it. But it has a range of 60', and is heavy 4, with three types of ammo.
- And Tau Fire Warriors, who are no tougher than Guard Stormtroopers...but have a gun that will punch straight through a flak vest, and the Guardsman wearing it, without slowing down.
- Tau are weaker (they suck in close combat); anyway, speaking of Stormtroopers, their hellguns can now punch right through space marine armour. Too bad for the shorter than normal range.
- Oddly enough, this trope can sometimes apply to Super-Heavy vehicles... The biggest, baddest, toughest things in the game! The "Chain Reaction" entry on their damage tables represents the shot hitting a fuel tank or something and doing further damage to the machine, and it then lets you roll on the damage table again. If you roll another 6, you repeat it all over again! With a huge amount of luck and several consecutive sixes, a single damaging shot can obliterate a Titan or Stompa that normally requires you to effectively "kill" it several times in a row to actually score a kill!
- The Hunchback IIc BattleMech (the mecha illustrated at the top of the article) exemplifies this trope in the Battletech universe. It mounts two Ultra autocannon-20s which, more or less, is apocalyptic firepower for
a 'Mech its size any 'Mech (each can do 40 damage, which will destroy any mech its weight or less with a center hit), but sacrifices almost all of its armor in order to do so. Little wonder it's popular with Deathseeker Mechwarriors. In fact, a recent sourcebook clarifies: It was made as pretty much the Clan's equivalent of an Death sentence. Any warrior assigned to a Hunchback IIc was explicitly not expected to come back from their next battle.
- It also barely has any ammo for those boomsticks (5 shots each, or 2 "double" shots and one regular). Its predecessor, the Inner Sphere standard Hunchback (circa 3025), has one AC/20, 10 shots, and near-maximum armor for a 50 ton mech chassis. The "new and improved" model, from 3050, has only 5 shots.
- In the same vein, the dinky UrbanMech mounts an AC/10, but has only 6 tons of armor—appreciable for its size of 30 tons, but still not very much—and moves like molasses on top of being absolutely tiny. However, any light mech will be cored if Urbie hits it, and more than one Urbie makes things get very dangerous in a hurry unless you outrange them. Plus they're such cute little things! (The Urban Mech isn't a deathtrap so much as it's designed to fight in a very specific environment. Gee, I wonder what that might be?)
- There is, however, a variant of the Urbanmech that reduces its armor to put the AC-20 in the same, now less-well-protected frame.
- A lot of "support" 'mechs, like the classic Catapult or the frankly ridonkulous-looking Yeoman, will mount a lot of long range weapons like LRMs, but have little armour or weapons for close-and-dirty combat.
- The Hollander BZK-F3 light 'mech tonnage is mostly taken up by the gauss rifle on its shoulder. (The mech weighs 35 tons, where the Gauss Cannon takes up 15.)
- There are a few vehicles like this, such as the Hetzer Wheeled Assault Gun (effectively) a BFG mounted inside an armored box on a heavy truck chassis) and the tiny 5-ton Savannah Master - the fact that it was designed to take on an opponent four times its tonnage has to count for something.
- In the novels particularly, the old Inner Sphere Rifleman 'mech is notorious as a deathtrap, with rear armour somewhere between cardboard and tin can levels. You don't want to be standing in front of it, though - each arm mounts an autocannon and medium and large lasers.
- Dungeons And Dragons 4E gives us the Striker set of classes (Ranger, Rogue, Warlock, Barbarian, though the Barbarian has pretty good HP, if lackluster starting armor): Insane damage output, but rely on the Defenders to hold down the thing they're attacking so that they don't get crushed.
- 3.5 psionics has the wilder class. Less than a fourth of the powers of a Psion, but can up each powers output by your level, turning a single level 3 character into something capable of cutting down much higher level enemies on average rolls. Has little health and can daze/weaken themselves afterward. Unfortunately, the downsides add up to make it Awesome But Impractical.
- Some 3.5 characters, using a number of different sourcebooks, can become this trope. As an example, take an ordinary fighter and give him Power Attack, a feat which subtracts attack accuracy in exchange for higher damage. Then take a feat called Shock Trooper, which shifts the accuracy penalty to armor class — i.e. it makes you easier to hit. This build, known as the 'Charger build' and often by the name Glass Cannon, results in a character able to do massive damage when he charges in and attacks ... but at the cost of an armor class that a small child throwing rocks could probably hit.
- There are plenty of Magic: The Gathering cards that have high power but low toughness. However, the card Glass Golem
 seems to deliberately invoke this trope.
- Carefree Hedonist characters in Bliss Stage start out with 7 instead of 6 relationships, most of which have very high Intimacy and form very powerful psychic weapons. Only TWO of those relationships have enough Trust for the weapons they manifest as to survive a critical failure.
- Chess, the Queen is strongest because she can move across the board and can move horizontally, vertically, and diagonally. Yet like with all chess pieces, she goes down in one.
Video Games
- Naoto and Teddie from Persona 4 fits this trope fairly well. Naoto is overall fairly balanced, having instant-kill Light and Dark moves, Almighty spells, good physical moves and Mind Charge, however. She have fairly low HP, and all her physical attacks take good chunks off her HP every time she uses them, her instant-kill moves does not have a very high chance of hitting overall, and having Almighty magic leaves her with with being incapable of doing a lot of damage when compared to the characters who get the Boost and Amp moves of their spells, and Almighty takes almost double the SP per attack then normal elemental attacks. Teddie is even more balanced towards magic, with good Ice spells and healing magic. But he can't get rid of his elemental weakness, and his Endurance is fairly low, so he can't take that many hits overall, which is not good for one of your main healers.
- The Dracosage class of Soul Nomad And 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.
- The Myrmidon character class from the Fire Emblem series; very powerful, but dies if a heavy-duty attacker so much as looks at it funny.
- If they manage to hit it, because thankfully the class can dodge everything (especially true for the games with a 2 RNG hit calculator).
- Except, for some strange reason, in FE 9. Both Mia and Zihark are surprisingly hittable until they become Swordmasters.
- Any flying unit, especially in FE 4. Arrows will always, ALWAYS kill them no matter how powerful they are. This can be averted if you pair Fury with Alec, whose Awareness skill negates critical hits and special attack moves like Meteor Sword.
- The Mage/Sage class can be like this also at times. Particularly noticeable in FE 10, where HP caps aren't a uniform 60 and the magic-users have the lowest caps, and in FE 6, well, just because it's FE 6.
- And even within the Sages of FE 10, one or two stand out. While most magic users cap HP at 50 in their final class, lower than any of the weapon-wielding classes, Ilyana the Arch Sage (Thunder) and Empress Sanaki cap it off lower still, at 45. Sanaki in particular stands out as being extremely weak on Defense (20 maximum) and can get her Magic stat as high as 40, but Ilyana's the better fit for this trope for two reasons. First, Sanaki is already at third tier when she joins up, while Ilyana has to be raised from a fragile Thunder Mage. Second, Ilyana's the only one that can reach level SS in Thunder Magic, allowing her to use Rexbolt. This is something that would really come in handy in part three of the five-part endgame, where every enemy is a dragon and the boss has Nihil (so Dragonfoe, which cuts through the regular enemies of the level quite well, is useless.
- FE 10 also has Micaiah. She has crazy high stats in Magic, Resistance, and Luck, along with a tome only she can use, Thani, which can pretty much one-hit kill any horse-riding or armored unit, meaning she can easily deal good damage to most enemies. Of course, her Defense is practically non-existent and her low speed stat means she will rarely, if ever, dodge, meaning that every enemy unit (with the exception of magic users) is capable of destroying her.
- Kind of subverted in Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War, where Sword Master class excels at just about everything. They have the highest max cap in all categories except magic, magic def, and def; though the only ones with higher def are the heavy armored classes. In any case, they are definitely not fragile but this may be due to the unique pairing system of Fire Emblem 4.
- The Hunter from Left 4 Dead is generally a Fragile Speedster, but if a skilled player can land a pounce from maximum range it can hit like a ton of bricks with claws. Not to mention that it's a guaranteed kill if the player you pounce on can't be rescued by his allies.
- The Boomer may qualify 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 Charger and Spitter kinda fits, the Charger moves really, really fast, and can do severe damage in short time, but won't take much damage at all. While the Spitter can pretty much be taken down by one close-up Shotgun blast, but the spit can do 3% if you as much as touch it, being spat at during a horde is NO FUN AT ALL.
- The Dark Knight job in Final Fantasy XI, made moreso by the fact that many of their abilities consume their own HP.
- 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.
- Black Mages, while they're practically invaluable for a good portion of the game, they can't equip the best armor and have pretty low HP. Summoners are sometimes in this boat as well.
- 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. Compliment its growth with that of a Paladin, however...
- May from Guilty Gear. Although her defense is on par with most of the characters, she can dish more damage than most of the others.
- The true glass cannons are Chipp and Millia as most characters can dish insane amount of damage anyway.
- Mipsy in Neo Quest 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...
- Romancing Sa Ga had several; Romancing Sa Ga 3 had Muse, Leonid, and Fairy. Muse had 6 LP and no weapon levels but could easily learn techniques, Leonid could 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 had decent levels in weapons but only 7 LP and a piece of permanent equipment taking up a vital slot for equipment, it also was weak against attacks used on flying creatures. Romancing Sa Ga Minstrel Song had Captain Silver, very powerful but only 7 LP and the Dragon Knight which had 4 LP but can't lose LP directly due to a piece of equipment that negates direct LP attacks.
- Artillery units in many Real Time Strategy games, such as Reavers in Star Craft, Mortar Teams in War Craft III or Katyushas in Rise Of Nations. Powerful, but do not last very long if left undefended. Most of them have a minimum range, too, making them all the more vulnerable (though it makes sense, as if they didn't their splash damage would hurt themselves).
- Lampshaded in the Rise Of Nations spinoff Rise Of Legends, in which the desert-dwelling Alin, whose units revolve around fire, sand, glass and Zerging, have an actual "Glass Cannon" as their siege unit.
- Probably just a coincidence, he Alin have sand and fire units because they're staple's of Arabian Nights fantasy, and glass units because that's what you get when you mix sand and fire.
- Siege Tanks are also not very sturdy in Star Craft.
- Rogues in many tabletop games and MMORPGs tend to be these. Wizards, of course, are naturally squishy.
- Shin Akuma and God 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.
- Jigglypuff in the Super Smash Bros. series, particularly with regard to her lethal Rest attack. Mr. Game & Watch from the same series is even lighter (he's a two-dimensional character resembling an old LCD display) but has some powerful hits. In Brawl, Zelda has become updated to where she has downright deadly kicks and a powerful long-range attack, but is still easily tossed around.
- The Attack form of the Pokemon Deoxys is the perfect example. It has the highest attack power of all Pokemon, and one of the highest speeds...but on the other hand it has one of the worst defenses on both the physical and special sides, and a very mediocre HP. It's a very powerful Pokemon, as it can One-hit most anything that comes in front of it, but if it's hit at least once it's done for good. It can even end up OHK Oing itself if it's confused. Not too sure if there's a trope for that.
- Normally a Stone Wall, but Shuckle would be a most extreme example, but only if it uses Power Trick (and is taught a decent attack)
- A lot of Pokemon, who have high Speed and Attack stats, but can get taken down in a single hit if they don't OHKO the opponent or can't get the first hit. Alakazam, Weavile, the list goes on and on and on...
- Pikachu particularly exemplifies this trope. With the Light Ball, Pikachu doubles its attack and special attack, placing in around the likes of the heavy hitters. The problem is that it's still a tiny little electric rodent guaranteed to keel over and die should the opponent so much as breathe on it.
- Not to leave out Medicham, who has an ability which doubles his natural Attack stat when he enters battle. Woe to those who use Hi-Jump Kick and miss.
- Rampardos is the trope personified. It has a massive Attack stat, one of highest in the games, but despite his good HP, his defenses are both completely terrible. It's also notable that it's version counterpart, Bastiodon is a Stone Wall
- And then there's Gyarados, a bad-tempered sea serpent known for knocking down towns...with an electrical vulnerability so severe that all you need to do to take it out is install shag carpet and wear woolly socks. Its fairly good Special Defense somewhat compensates for this, though.
- The quasi-legendary dragons (Dragonite, Salamence and Garchomp) suffer from this, due to being insanely powerful frickin dragons that wither and die if anything with an ice attack so much as looks at them.
- But with Garchomp, it's not THAT much of an issue.
- Dragonite is also rather bulky and, when trained properly, can usually take at least one ice type attack and survive it. Roost helps, taking away the flying type temporarily and halving the weakness along with bringing his HP back up.
- Speaking of ice, Ice-types in general tends to be glass cannons, as they are the worst type defensively, having many common weakness and are only resistant to other ice type attacks, but the types weak to ice-attacks are also common. Of course, this leads to actual ice type Pokemon being underused, but ice-type attacks (Ice Beam in particularly) are horribly overused.
- Fire-types have similar advantages and similar problems. Not as extreme as Ice, but it still doesn't take much to snuff 'em out.
- Not as extreme as some of the other examples, but Geno from Super Mario RPG. Strong physical and magical attacks (non-elemental, even!), but crap defense.
- In Mario And 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 And Luigi Bowsers 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.
- 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 highest agility, but the lowest defense of thr group. The game takes this a little far; He's also the most emotionally fragile party member.
- To be fair, the guy's fifteen and has been sheltered his whole life, compared to Issac and Garet, who have been training for years to never be beaten again, and the water chick lives where it's frickin' cold, all the time.
- Grimm from Advance Wars: Dual Strike. He has 130% attack power to all units, but only 80% defense day-to-day without using forces. One of the upsides to this is that his CO gauge fills up faster, since he's both doing and taking more damage, but the same could be said of the opponent.
- Sturm from the first Advance Wars, in Campaign mode, has 120% attack and 80% defense.
- In general, indirect units. They can do rather gigantic amounts of damage to anything they attack, but they cannot counterattack should they be hit, nor can they attack things that are too close to them. They also tend to have fairly low movement range. In Gameboy Wars 3, this is particularly true, or at least the parts about low defense and lack of counterattack. But they do have range fire to work with.
- Bombers are monstrously powerful and are out of reach of most units, but pretty much anything that can hit them downs them in 1-2 hits.
- In the 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.
- Nasuverse protagonists tend to be of this type, being mostly average but possessing a hidden talent or three. A fitting example would be Tohno Shiki from Tsukihime; he can end the existence of anything possibly killable in modern times, but he is still simply a highly-trained human and incomparable to non-human beings.
- Emiya Shiro from Fate/stay night is of a similar mold, being skilled in an allegedly useless magecraft (and for all intents, it really is) that turns out to be incredible powerful when applied in his unique way.
- While Gilgamesh from Fate Stay Night is actually insanely powerful in both offense and defense, his ridiculously bloated ego prevents him from taking threats seriously for the majority of fights, resulting in the Glass Cannon effect when the Crouching Moron Hidden Badass makes his move.
- A straight Fighting Game example can be found in Tsukihime spinoff-sequel 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.
- Shiki has shown that he can really take beatings and has never been shown to be particularly fragile. He's probably less fragile than many of the other characters. His superhuman abilities likely extend to strength, agility, constitution, and instinct; the only problem is, everyone else is some kind of super monster.
- On the whole, the Terrans are like this in Starcraft. Their units can do fearsome single-shot damage, but they don't have nearly as many HP as comparable Protoss units. With 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.
- Not to mention the Zerg suicide units. All the more if they are clustered, since one of them exploding will take the rest out too.
- A fully-upgraded Zergling lives and breathes this trope. With upgraded movement and attack speeds, Zerglings can tear opponents to shreds far faster than any other unit in the game. But unless you can draw the enemy's fire with some Mighty Glacier Ultralisks or cover their approach with Dark Swarm, those Zerglings will get liquified before they can even land a hit.
- Katina Tarask from Super Robot Wars. 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 other 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. Getter-2 and 3 are Fragile Speedster and Tank, respectively, so the usual strategy is to have Getter-2 do all the work until there's only the boss left, then rush in with Getter-1. No one cares about Getter-3.
- How is that different from actual series?
- Dancougar is the posterchild for this. Four (later five) pools of Spirit commands to work with compiled with very powerful attacks for both close and long range combat. It is much more effficient 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 for damage reduction. Getter 2 and Shin Getter 2 are the only ones worthwhile, since they weren't meant for tanking anyways and instead have evasive skills.
- The Atreides Sonic Tank in Dune 2, Dune 2000 and Emperor: Battle For Dune is incredibly powerful, but has practically paperboard armor.
- Generally, the player's ship in Shoot Em Ups. While it will often be a One Hit Point Wonder, it will have plenty of its own powerful weapons.
- Pyro's units in Sacrifice epitomise this trope.
- Charnel's are a even better fit.
- Oswald in Odin Sphere is immensely deadly in speed and strength, but has the weakest defense of all the characters. This is meant to reflect his recklessness and disregard of his own cursed life. Funnily enough, this is balanced out by his HP stats being much, much easier and faster to level than the other four protagonists, compensating easily for how much damage he takes.
- Mercedes is definitely the Glass Cannon of the game, considering how much damage she dishes out contrasted with her basically non-existant HP (Oswald has, iirc, the highest HP of the five). Oswald can actually be hit—an astonishing number of things will One Hit Kill Mercedes.
- The Ronin class from Etrian Odyssey (and especially its sequel) 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 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 in any mission.
- Supreme Commander features this trope in several experimentals and units, particularly those of the Aeon. The various mobile artillery units, Sprite Striker, Usha-Ah, Czar, and Aurora are among the more prominent.
- 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.
- In Team Fortress 2, the Scout, while mainly being a Fragile Speedster, can inflict some serious ouch with his Sawed Off Shotgun. The Sniper probably qualifies as well, what with being a sniper.
- And the Spy, who relies on cloak and disguise to get past the enemy, and can be killed by stray bullets. Successfully getting behind and opponent, however, yields instant death. This can be employed to devastating use, where a medic can make a spy completely invulnerable in lieu of a heavier class, yet take out far more members of the enemy team. Speed, distance and stealth, all accounted for.
- The Pyro, too, being able to completely devastate most classes if he/she gets to close with the flame thrower, not ot mention that the Pyro is faster then at least half of the classes in the game. However, the short range will most likely make you go down fairly quickly. The trick is to hide, above, behind or in a corner, and then ambush the enemy, few people can survive a unexpected Pyro.
- And 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 bow Sniper), and are exceedingly prone to getting backstabbed while scoped. However, a single charged headhot is enough to kill just about anything, and charged body shots are still exceedingly painful. A properly positioned Sniper can be just as devastating to an attacking team as a Sentry.
- 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.
- 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.
- This is not an exaggeration (much). At level 1, they have 4 HP. If they get hit even once, there's a good chance that they'll die from it.
- Practically all classic fantasy MMORPGs have examples of these in their mages and often also in their rogues. For example, World Of Warcraft has a couple of DPS caster variants - mages, warlocks & shadow priests. This is especially true for mages who choose to specialise in Fire magic, which gives them the ability to burn their enemies to death really quickly and die whenever someone looks at them.
- Magi, after being nerfed badly years ago, had their complaints summed by a community manager with "they don't consider themselves glass cannons anymore, just plain old glass".
- Balance Druids, on the other hand, have access to a massive armor boost. Which they need, seeing as they can heal and are subject to Shoot The Medic First - or maybe people just hate moonfire spam.
- Warlocks take the trope a step further and have a demon to protect them at all times (unless the player is suicidal), while Mages get temporary pets and Shadow Priests get nothing. They also have a larger HP pool on average then other casters but this is double edged due to the fact that after they run low on Mana they must use a unique ability called Lifetap to convert HP into MP (and they have a lower MP pool as a result) and they will also choose equipment that favors their HP stat (ie. ones that boost stamina) over ones that boost their mana as well.
- Rogue sorta fits this, especially when the game first came out. They were the highest DPS of the melees but also the most fragile. Their evasion and HP makes them a lot less fragile than the clothies though.
- 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 was 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.
- 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: dramatatically 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.
- Shen Woo from The King Of Fighters. Good speed, incredible strength... and it only takes five or six hits to knock him out.
- Carriage Ballista in Rome: Total War expansion "Barbarian Invasion". Mobile artillery that can tear apart any Mighty Glacier unit but will die if an enemy as much as looks at it funny. Also prone to Friendly Fire problems.
- 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).
- In X8, the Black Zero required getting Zero's other upgrades first, including an armor upgrade like X's and the Sigma Blade which had double the power of his basic sword.
- By the time he gets his own series he finally gets a good gun. Safer, but his saber does way more damage anyway. So if you wanna Speed Run...
- Ironically in Megaman X3, the first game where Zero was playable, he was more of a Mighty Glacier. He had a charge shot attack that could allow two charge shots and a charged slash at full power, but was slower than X and couldn't airdash.
- Not to mention X's Z sword is far superior to Zero's.
- 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 the Sorrow Games, and Albus from Order of Ecclesia.
- 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.
- The Rattkin enemy type in Wizardry VII are Glass Cannons of the Goddamned Bats variety (and Demonic Spiders for the more powerful versions).
- The preview of Diablo III on Gamesradar has this line about a newly unveiled class:"The Wizard is what Blizzard dub their ‘glass cannon’ class: a ranged spell-flinger with all the armor of a yogurt cup".
- 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.
- A few examples in the Command And 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 an rocket soldier comes near, you can pretty much kiss it goodbye. Well, it's not that bad if you can run over it.
- Red Alert 2 has the Prism Tank (although fairly weak, its shot spreads if it hits any non-building target), Mirage Tank (it disguises itself as tree and several of these can take out an Apocalypse Tank easily), and Tesla Tank (which is just powerful, has long range, 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 only real exception to the "aerial unit = glass cannon" rule is the Kirov airship which is just a pure and simple bullet-sponge.
- The demolition truck from Red Alert and Red Alert 2. They pack a nuke, so it's a nuke on wheels and I believe they have a faster build time than the nuke's charge time. But if they take any damage...
- Against infantry, and sometimes tanks: grenadiers and flame throwers. When in groups, they can reek devastation. However, when they die, they explode, taking down the rest of their squad mates.
- To an extent, the Obelisk of Nod and Tesla coils. Granted they dish a lot of damage, they also have the problem of being only able to target one enemy at a time. They also chew up a lot of power and are expensive. And they're about as flimsy as a house of cards.
- In the Red Alert series, capital ships, including the cruiser (RA1), dreadnoughts, aircraft carriers (both RA2 and 3), and Shoguns (RA3), avert this trope by being the most heavily armored naval units in the game. The Grand Cannon in RA2 also averts this trope, although it is immobile and, in skirmish games, it is only available to the French. The GDI Juggernaut/Behemoth of CnC 3 also averts this trope.
- C&C Generals has units such as the Chinese Inferno and Nuke Cannons, the GLA Scud Launcher 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.
- A number of units in Battle For Wesnoth fit this trope; one of the most extreme is the Horseman. Its attack would be decent but unremarkable, except for the fact that it has the "charge" property, which means that while using it the Horseman both deals and receives double damage. With luck, it can kill most level-one units in one turn on its own, but if it fails to kill it's in for a world of hurt. Its upgraded forms are even more deadly.
- Filo in Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings. She has one of the strongest attacks in the the game, but letting her near ranged enemies typically results in her quick death.
- MUGEN gives us a version of Light Yagami, who has one attack - he reads the enemy's name under their health bar and writes it in the Death Note. Four hits will knock him out, but if you don't get them in before he's done writing, you lose.
- Agility carry heroes from the (in)famous Warcraft 3 map Defense Of The Ancients 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 armour, thus lessening the "glassiness" slightly.
- Kadie from Crimson Tears. Highest innate attack stat of the three playable characters, and exclusive access to the two most powerful types of melee weapon. Lowest HP and Defense of the three characters, as well.
- The Archer line of classes in Maple Story 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- In Mass Effect, Garrus Vakarian is pretty much one of these. He is one of only three squad members who can use assualt rifles - the most powerful and versitale 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.
- All Artillery units in Star Wars: Empire at War and its expansion, alhough the Consortium's artillery at least has shields to let it last longer...
- Stealth Bombers, the Tech 2 version of a missile frigate in Eve Online. A half-dozen can take out a Battleship in one volley, but they will die if you so much as look at them funny. Of course, their two best defenses are the Covert Ops cloak (lets you warp around cloaked with no speed penalty, neither of which other cloaks can do) and the fact that large-size guns and missiles (like the ones a BS would mount) have a hard time hitting a target the size of the SB (frigs, both T1 and T2, are considered small-sized targets, and guns/missiles are designed to be most effective against the same size target).
- The Zuul from Sword Of The Stars. Their ships are basically lots of gun turrets glued together, and their general battle style tends towards We Have Reserves.
- Your sword beam in the early Legend Of Zelda games only works when your health is absolutely full... one hit with the weakest enemy attack will disable it.
- The Black Imps in Okami 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.
- The Commando class from Battlefield Heroes combines a knife wielding, invisability-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 that a direct hit from a tank cannon, but they have only 80 health and die extremely quickly.
- Hunters from Halo are like this, especially in the first one. They are the most powerful enemies with the strongest cannon (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 in the first one, it's a one hit kill.
- The Ninja job in most Final Fantasy games that use the job system (and a couple that don't, such as FF4's Edge) are usually these; Very powerful, since they can use two weapons, but they tend to have low HP and can't equip shields or heavy armor.
- Dark Shiva in Final Fantasy X. 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, Beserk 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.
- Ragna the Bloodedge from Blaz Blue has a very high damage output, but has the lowest HP and rather sucky defence. 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 like Hakumen. As a warning, this is the game's main character. Tier Induced Scrappy Nu-13 also has very good damage, especially with spam her Drive, but her HP and 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.
- Dmitri Petrovich, Achmed Khan, and Annie Frazier of the Backyard Sports series. They always have great offensive skills, but weak defensive skills.
- The Jansen Carbon X12 in Burnout Paradise: Very fast, very agile, can turn very sharply into its enemies; but very light, very weak, and very easy to wreck.
- The 2004 The Bards Tale game has the Vorpal Rat. Has the highest damaging attack among your summons, but it has only 1 HP.
- 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 (though this is moreso for the Pastamancer, who can use all 5 elements, as opposed to Saucerors, who can only use Hot and Cold spells). 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.
- Stranger himself in the later parts of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, where after being revealed as a Steef, any upgrades he's got have been stolen by him, including health/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 now.
- The eradicator Unit from Machines can wipe out nearly any other unit but is weak, slow and probably will destroy itself in close combat.
- Ironically, in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the strongest Light Armor is the Glass Armor (second strongest if you've gotten the Amber Armor from the Shivering Isles expansion).
- Luminous Arc 2's Ayano is one of the strongest and fastest fighters in the game, yet for obvious reasons, her physical defence isn't quite as high. But she can tank against magic, due her high Resistance.
Webcomics
- 8-bit Theater's Black Mage described himself in these words, a few days after this page was launched. Some might say he's a Squishy Wizard instead.
- Ran in Bob And George uses the Cossack Buster, a weapon of nightmarishly destructive proportions, easily able to cut a scar through a city. Unfortunately, Ran himself will instantly die if he is so much as touched.
- Fortunately, due to being made of cheap Soviet components and a convenient teleporter, he can be brought back fairly quickly. In fact, he's pretty much Nigh Invulnerable!
- The titular Dominic Deegan shares a handful of qualities with Marvel comics' telepaths, i.e. physically weak while mentally untouchable. He describes himself as his body being "frail and weak, but [his] mind is a fortress you have no hope of conquering."
- In Sluggy Freelance, Torg is capable of killing just about anything when his Cool Sword Chaz is powered up and starts glowing. While his sword is unbreakable and nearly unstoppable, however, Torg himself is as physically vulnerable as your average human being.
Real Life
- Tank Destroyers. Popular back in WW 2, they were Exactly What It Says On The Tin - usually armed with a tank-grade BFG to destroy enemy vehicles(esp. tanks) with great efficiency, using the mobility allowed by their lighter armor to flank the enemy tanks and attack from the rear. Nowadays, the role of the tank destroyers has been taking up by helicopter gunships, though a number of lighter vehicles have been adapted to the purpose as well.
- American tank destroyers during World War II were very lightly armoured, in most cases lacking a roof for their turret which exposed the crew to all kinds of nasty unpleasantness like enemy fire, grenades, and worst of all, rain, which is just plain mean-spirited on the part of the idiots who came up with that idea to shave off some weight. They usually mounted a bigger gun than friendly tanks and were extremely fast: the M18 Hellcat can clock up to 55 mph on good roads. However, the whole American doctrine was more or less bunk, since by that time the Germans were on the defensive, and the undergunned American Shermans often wound up facing them instead, without any tank destroyer help most of the time.
- The reason why a roof was left off American tank destroyers is a matter of debate. Saving weight might have been one, a light turret means a lighter chassis and a faster turn rate. Ian Hogg proposes the theory that it was to remind the crew that they were not a tank and should not pretend they are.
- They could've at least given them a friggin' 5-dollar tarp or something to keep the rain off of them...
- A slightly related example would be the Soviet IS-2 heavy tank from WWII. Its 122mm gun took ages to reload, but could penetrate a Panther tank - completely. One Panther was observed being hit by an IS-2 shell, with the shell coming out the rear of the tank, going straight through several inches of sloped armour, and several more inches of ablative armour e.g. the crew. However, Panthers themselves, with much lighter (but still, for the era, very powerful) 75mm gun, could also penetrate IS-2 armour right back.
- One example of the light vehicles mentioned in the first paragraph: This. It's basically a Jeep-like vehicle with a recoilless rifle (think "bazooka") mounted on top. Or how about this: a recoilless rifle mounted on, of all things, a Vespa scooter, designed for airborne operations.
- Suicide bombers also tend to fall into this. They don't usually pack armor or a gun, but when they explode, you're in trouble.
- Kamikaze bombers on the other hand subvert this. They were pretty ineffective despite the good fireworks show they gave off. On the other hand, the psychological effect may have been a little more intimidating.
- Admiral Sir John Fisher is famous for saying "speed is armour," and was a proponent of battlecruisers, ships with large (battleship-size) guns that traded armor for speed.
- Unfortunately, this combination of stupendous speed (some battlecruisers were able to match equivalent light cruisers) and firepower resulted in them being destroyed with distressing regularity compared to the more heavily armored, moderately slower, and overall more sensible dreadnought types which Fisher incidentally had a hand in developing. This was clearly demonstrated during the Battle of Jutland in which the British Royal Navy lost three battlecruisers to enemy fire. This is not to be taken lightly, since battlecruisers more or less equalled battleships in size, crew requirements, and notably, cost.
- The Germans on the other hand, adopted the more sensible policy of while equipping them more or less to the same standards, ensuring that protection was not completely sacrificed for firepower or speed. As a result of this, in the very same engagement, they only lost one.
- This was taken to an extreme in the form of the HMS Furious. The main armament consisted of two 18 inch guns and yet it had the armor of a light cruiser - hence the informal term, "large light cruiser". Thankfully it was converted to an aircraft carrier before it saw action.
- A variant would be any military system with a sufficiently high price tag. For one, the F-22 Raptor has been accused of this (complete with claims that its body could be punctured by small arms fire; not even its brief renaming as the F/A-22 Raptor for "attack" helped), and the Zumwalt-class destroyer will be a two-ship class due to its extreme expense.
- Technically, any modern fighter aircraft can be punctured by small-arms fire, as they do not carry armor at all, given that it is normal for them to fly well above small-arms or even AA-gun engagement range, and that their biggest enemies are guided missiles(which require a combination of maneuverability and electronic countermeasures or stealth to defeat, not armor). The aforementioned F-22 is designed to operate at altitudes around 50000-60000 feet, where it would not be facing any small-arms threats.
- However, punctured does not necessarily equal damaged or even injured. All modern aircraft have a variety of redundant systems and/or redundant flight characteristics in order to avoid being shot down (or otherwise just disabled) just because someone was tossing around a 9mm sidearm. The A-10 Warthog(a unique example of a heavily-armored, low-altitude ground-attack jet) for instance was designed to be able to fly missing essentially half of it's equipment (engines lost, wing lost, etc) with no mechanical assistance. Air-to-air fighters may be a good deal softer, but that doesn't mean that they'd give up sensible design features completely.
- Indeed. One telling example of the difference between "puncturing" and "damaging" dates back to the Second World War, when an American P-47 Thunderbolt fighter pilot counted hits on his plane after he'd returned to base. He lost count around 200 - including some large-calibre holes - without even walking around the plane. And then there's the B-17 bomber that flew back to base with the wreck of a German fighter that tried to ram it embedded in its rear hull, or the story of the F-15 that lost an entire wing and managed to land safely. Planes are tougher than they appear.
- Light tanks by definition are supposed to be very mobile, protected from small arms and constitute a serious danger. E.g. Soviet BT Tanks: on most BT-5s, 45-mm longbarrel cannon, armour 10-13 mm — price of max speed 52 km/h on tracks and 72 on wheels.
- ...and then it just goes over the top, look at this◊ experimental monstrosity (1936-1936). It's a launcher for two fortification-busting 245-mm missiles slapped on BT-5. Max range is 1500 m. Failed to hit production run as unfit for real assault due to its crappy accuracy, slow reload and — surprise — fragility from top to bottom. Normally light tanks have nothing to do within visual range from enemy fortification even without extra explosives strapped on top.
- The torpedo boat was a small but maneuverable ship that had powerful armaments that could be used to sink the much bigger battleships of the era, and relied on its speed, agility, and ability to field a lot of them to avoid not getting destroyed.
- If we're counting the torpedo boat, then surely conventional submarines (at least up to and including WW 2 vintage) also qualify — great for crippling or killing enemy surface vessels from ambush, but they have to get fairly close to do it and again their only real defense against anything that can shoot back is not to get hit in the first place.
- WWI style Monitors were shallow draft ships of questionable seaworthiness onto which the largest spare gun(s) at hand was crammed. Basically a floating artillery battery, they had the advantage of being cheap and able to get in very close to shore where traditional naval ships could not go, even going up rivers.
- Massively subverted with the original Monitor-type ships, which were almost [[Game Breaker]]s. While they were unseaworthy at first, that rapidly changed even over the duration of the war, and they were equipped with guns that simply obliterated any conventional ship, while still sporting enough armor and low-profile design which made them almost invincible. They were sufficiently good that after the Monitor v. Merrimac duel (in which the Confederate ship actually fought a deliberately undergunned Monitor) that nobody ever really tried to fight them without strong fortifications and a large advantage in firepower.
- Humans in hunting situations. If the guns fail to bring down that bear before it closes into close quarters, prepare for a trip to the hospital.
- Bob Sanders of the NFL's Indianapolis Colts. One of the league's hardest hitters, maybe the best safety in all of football... when he's healthy, which is about as rare as the Colts beating the Chargers these days. Sanders frequently spends half the regular season on the injured list, which might be because he plays so hard all the time, running full-force into offensive players on every play.
- Several examples in mixed martial arts, including fighters that have devastating offense and a weak chin, or fighters with ludicrously brilliant skill in one area and none in any other.
- Shinya Aoki is one of the most brilliant no-gi grapplers on the planet, but he reacts to punches as though they were illegal.
- Similarly, Demian Maia is one of the most decorated brazilian jujitsu practitioners in MMA. At one point, he was undefeated at 11-0 and had won 5 straight fights by submission, despite having no striking ability. Then he fought◊ Nate Marquardt...
- Bob Sapp has enough strength to pick up a 260 pound man literally off the mat and piledrive◊ him violently to the ground. Yes, in MMA, where piledrivers are neither safe nor done with compliance from the victim. He beat one of the best kickboxers in the world (Ernesto Hoost) twice in 2002. Sapp is also known for the trifecta of having a glass chin, possessing very little toughness or heart, and having laughably few grappling skills. He lost in 2009 to a man 150 pounds lighter than him who fancies himself a superhero, sports a mullet, and goes by the name "Minowaman."
- Melvin Manhoef, a dutch kickboxer, has truly horrifying punching power. He was the first, and so far only man to ever knock out Mark Hunt, who was famous for shrugging off career-ending strikes to his presumably granite-filled head. Manhoef delivered said KO◊ while moving backwards. Unfortunately, even though he's fought at the highest levels of kickboxing and MMA and can put together beautiful offensive combinations, Manhoef's strike defense is quite lacking, and he has been knocked out by mid-level fighters far more often than an elite striker should. More saliently, his grappling skills are pure garbage. For MMA professionals, fighting Manhoef can either end in Melvin decapitating you with a punch, or with him meekly tapping out 15 seconds after the fight hits the mat.
- Many fighters like Melvin Guillard and Houston Alexander have decent striking, scary power and zero grappling skill. Stand with them and they're likely to hurt you, take them down and they'll play you the three-tap symphony.
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