Basic Trope: A character is noticeably specialised in close-range fighting for the standards of the setting.
- Straight: Claire specialises in martial arts and/or melee weapons even though long-ranged combat is the norm.
- Exaggerated:
- Damien, the generalist of the team and next-best close-range combatant, looks like a sniper by comparison.
- Multi-Melee Master
- Claire completely lacks an attack that works at medium to long range.
- Downplayed:
- Claire has limited training in ranged weapons, enabling her to use them competently. However, her allies and enemies have almost all completely mastered those weapons, making them more accurate.
- Claire uses a Short-Range Shotgun while most people use an Assault Rifle or a Sniper Rifle.
- Claire does have access to ranged weapons but simply prefers physical combat or is frequently placed into situations where her ranged weapons are useless.
- Justified:
- The setting is Urban Fantasy, which means there is plenty of confined spaces and cover available to provide opportunities for close-range combatants.
- Claire is a Bare-Fisted Monk, and having rejected all weapons but her fists she understandably not equipped to fight anyone at a distance.
- Inverted:
- Long-Range Fighter
- Claire is skilled in attacking at all ranges.
- Subverted: Claire fights at close range and her adversary moves out of range, taunting her about how her skills are now useless. Claire promptly draws a bow at him and shoots it.
- Double Subverted: ... The arrow misses.
- Parodied: Claire wildly swings at her opponents, who hold her at arm's length and laugh as she misses them completely.
- Zig Zagged: Claire fires a second arrow which does hit the target, albeit in a non-fatal area. They backpedal a bit more while Claire fires two more times, both arrows off the mark. Content that they are at a safe distance, the enemy begins to taunt Claire again.
- Averted: Claire is a renowned Karate master, yet every fight scene she's in has her using long-ranged strategies and attacks.
- Enforced: The writer for Claire's character genuinely has no idea how long-ranged combat should work, so she decides to make Claire a short-ranged combatant.
- Lampshaded: "Do you have to be so close to me every time we fight?"
- Invoked: The party assembled before choosing their specialisations. Claire agreed to serve as a point-defence of sorts for the other members of the party.
- Exploited: Claire masters defensive feint traps to reel in opponents and take away their range advantage.
- Defied: Claire is offered a set of skills to train. She's afraid of being stabbed, so she opts for becoming a Long-Range Fighter instead.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Claire watches as her team is killed, one-by-one, by an enemy from afar, her close-range skills unable to save the lives of her friends. She trains hard for years to master every other skill and becomes a master assassin. The story's theme promotes the idea that people are more than archetypes and points out the flaws of being good at only one skill.
- An enemy takes out Claire [[Kiting by shooting at her from just outside her range and then running]], eventually getting Victory by Endurance.
- Reconstructed:
- Fortunately, many of Claire's opponents are not as well-trained as her in close quarters (doubly so now that she is an assassin), so Claire manages to get some mileage out of her original talent before being forced to resort to something else.
- Claire works as part of a team including two Support Party Member, two Long-Range Fighter, and another close range specialist. The two close range specialists clear enclosed spaces and prevent the enemy from ambushing the long range snipers at close range while said long range fighters are sniping enemies in open spaces, and the Support Party Members do whatever they do to support the squad.
- Kitable or not, Claire is so good she effectively has an "Instant Death" Radius and she can kill almost anything when properly positioned.
- Played For Drama: Clair, having run out of ranged weapons, takes a Last Stand against a horde of mooks with only a knife and her Unstoppable Rage.
- Untwisted: Claire is in a sci-fi world where ranged weapons are expected to invalidate point-blank combat. Never-the-less, she has less firepower than expected and instead relies on a plasma sword and short-range teleporter to immediately score kills against nearby enemies.
This link will take you just far enough to reach Close-Range Combatant.
