Misused (new crowner 12/2/13): Necessary Drawback

Glass Cannon is an established term; Cannonless Tank is not.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I would think that "defensive" would be enough to make it clear their primary attribute is defense. They don't really have any other strict attributes to speak of actually. But anyway I don't think there is any good word for "poor offense" that we can use that's accurate to the trope. At least not that I've seen so far. We might have to go about clarifying the offense part with a different naming sense, but I'm not really sure about how to go about that right now.

I said this before, but I doubt anybody is going to take it so literally as to think that it's about a literal tanks with the cannons and the treads. Plus Glass Cannon 's title reads like an object too, and it never gets misused as being literally about cannons made of glass. Or even misused as a story's Canon that's as flimsy as glass.

Like The Tank Glass Cannon is also an established term and they're literally terms both used by the same communities.

However "The Tank" and "Defensive Tank" are also established terms.

edited 27th Sep '13 7:27:44 PM by xanderiskander

I'm assuming you mean established by the gaming community? Really, I have never heard of terms like "Glass Cannon" until I came to TV Tropes or "Tank" until I started getting involved in this thread, so this statement doesn't really mean anything to me. I don't think that trope names should be defined solely on whether a term or phrase is an established or not, because what is "established" to one troper another troper may have never heard of. I prefer using terminology established by the dictionary instead, since it's more universal.

edited 27th Sep '13 8:09:24 PM by shiro_okami

"Tank" is an established term, but it's not what the trope is. A tank is a character whose job is to protect other characters. A Durable Weakling (or whatever) is a character with good defense but bad offense. There's significant overlap, but they're not the same — a character can tank by avoiding rather than absorbing attacks (a "dodge tank" or "evasion tank"), or they can do it with self-heals/health regeneration; a defensively strong but offensively weak character can be an aggressive, offensive character by wading into hordes of enemies in a full-out attack and trusting on their durability to keep them alive, etc. Besides, something like Durable/Armored/Iron Weakling doesn't rely on an additional layer of knowledge that a reader may or may not have; it's a straight description of the character's attributes, rather than a reference to a combat role that frequently-but-not-always has that stat distribution. That, and it matches the "descriptive-adjective evocative-noun" naming scheme of other tropes in the family like Fragile Speedster, Mighty Glacier, Lightning Bruiser, etc.

Glass Cannon doesn't have the misuse issues that Stone Wall does. Stone Wall is unclear and vague; it's not immediately obvious that it's about a character with a certain set of attributes, nor is it clear that it's about high defense and low offense rather than speed (walls are stationary, after all). If you want to argue that we should rename Glass Cannon, then you're welcome to, but that's not the issue at hand.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

We were saying that dodge/evasion style tanking was doable by a Fragile Speedster if the flavour supported it, right?

(Been playing D&D too long; there's no mechanical difference between dodging the attack, and it getting absorbed by the armour. I'm trying to remind myself not to use the mechanics for the Trifecta.)

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Speaking of terminology established by the dictionary, frailty is literally, like, in the actual dictionary definition of "weakling".

It's pretty much the exact opposite of what we want to convey.

I don't know if Glass Cannon is exclusive to gaming or not, but it's certainly pre-existing. It's widely used outside the site; we got to piggyback on that.

edited 28th Sep '13 1:20:53 AM by troacctid

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Tanky characters that tank by using dodging or evasion are the exception. Not the norm. It's generally used by a Mechanically Unusual Class. Most people only consider them tanks if they have the defensive attribute.

You can't really consider speedy characters to be "tanks", in most games because they usually have low defenses, and take big hits if they fail a dodge. Meaning if they take a hit or a streak of hits they're dead, and your strategy falls apart. For that reason they're considered more of a risk then defensive characters because dodging and evasion is always determined by percentages at the mercy of a random number generator, while defense is a flat attribute that's consistent when you take hits from the same attack multiple times.

A healer can be basically anything anyway. Sometimes they're a tanky class or they can be squishy, or in rare cases they might have high damage attacks or they're relatively the same across all attributes. That largely depends on what attributes and skills the healers are able to get in that game. And they may or may not be considered a Game-Breaker for it depending on how much they can do relative to the other types of characters.

That's probably the fairest point against The Tank. And I recognize it might not be that widely known outside those communities even though it's an established term. Although it's kind of weird Glass Cannon doesn't get misused if that's the case.

Some more name ideas. Soft Hitting Protector Soft Hitting Guardian, Forceless Guardian

edited 28th Sep '13 9:58:53 AM by xanderiskander

That's self-contradictory; high dodging and evasion are aspects of a high defensive attribute in some mechanics. D&D is an example of such a system.

That's why I keep falling into the trap of thinking with my mechanics when talking about the Stone Wall trope.

---

Read those two meanings again:

1. physically incapable of performing tasks; lacks power
2. easily broken

The idea is that, when paired with "Durable", the second definition is excluded, and only the first one applies.

edited 28th Sep '13 10:43:14 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

A tank is someone who protects the party by keeping the attention of the enemy and surviving the resulting attacks. Full stop. Our own article on the subject mentions both "avoidance tanks" and "regeneration tanks" as subtypes of the general tank role. Tanks include more than just "high defense, low offense" that this trope is supposed to be. I'd argue against using "Guardian" for the same reason. Hell, the Stone Wall page even points out that high defense/low offense characters are often The Berserker, because they can rely on their defense to keep them alive while they carve into the enemy.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Wait are we really dealing with four tropes or just 2 pairs of 2

i.e.

• Mighty Glacier and Fragile Speedster are inverses. High overall power (offense and defense) with low overall movement (speed, agility, mobility) vs. Low overall power with high overall movement

• Glass Cannon and Stone Wall are inverses. Can give a hit (offense) but can't take one (defense) vs. can take a hit but can't give one.

I feel like we really have two duos here and by trying to make it one group of four the definitions are getting really muddled and we start feeling the need to redefine everything.

edited 28th Sep '13 1:11:11 PM by acrobox

Then you can think about the others as inverse scales too

• Lightning Bruiser and Joke Character as inverses
• Master of All and Master of None as inverses
• Close-Range Combatant and Long-Range Fighter as inverses
• Glass Cannon and Stone Wall as inverses
• Mighty Glacier and Fragile Speedster as inverses
• Gradual Grinder and ??? as inverses

Jack of All Stats is a middle point on any of the inverse scales.

Then we don't think about how specifically people accomplish their roles, just that they do. It's not as much about stats and numbers, its about your function on The Team or the roster of playbale characters.

And if it makes sense to overlap you can be Fragile Speedster thats also a Close Range Combantant and a Stone Wall. But we don't need a trope for every possible combination of where you fall on all the inverse scales.

edited 28th Sep '13 1:25:42 PM by acrobox

Key words: turtle, wall, defender, shield, staunch, armored...um...

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Apparently I was unclear, because it seems you got the exact opposite message from the one I was trying to convey. My point was not that Glass Cannon was an unclear and vague name, but that it was clear even to someone who had never even heard of it before, so making up a trope name using a similar style would also be equally clear and doable. Glass Cannon is a good trope name not because it is an "established" term, but because it actually serves as a good demonstration of the trope; thus the same would apply to Cannonless Tank.

Mighty Glacier and Fragile Speedster are only partial inverses, because Fragile Speedster says nothing about offense. Lightning Bruiser and Joke Character are not inverses at all; they aren't even remotely related, considering that Joke Character is a video-game exclusive trope while Lightning Bruiser is a much more versatile trope.

EDIT: I made a typo.

edited 28th Sep '13 5:20:56 PM by shiro_okami

I at no point mentioned Lethal Joke Character, i said regular Joke Character

Also both Fragile Speedster and Mighty Glacier mention that they directly contrast as they are part of the core Power Trio of character builds with Jack of All Stats - essentially effective but difficult to use, ineffective but easy to use, and one in the middle.

Even if stat wise they aren't perfect inverses they are meant to be viewed that way, and are clearly a duo unrelated to Glass Cannon and Stone Wall and the other Competitive Balance tropes. That's what i was getting at anyway.

My main point is that we shouldn't rewrite and re-wick everything to force these tropes to all follow the same rules because they were never meant to be a group to begin with.

edited 28th Sep '13 4:58:04 PM by acrobox

The difference is that Glass Cannon is pretty obviously non-literal (why would anyone ever build a cannon out of glass?) but Cannonless Tank much less so — in addition to the arguments I've made against using "tank" for this trope in any case.

You're about ten pages too late for that line of discussion, man. We've already got a general consensus of what we're doing with these tropes, we're just hammering out the details of the execution, now.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I get what you're trying to do. It's a good idea, but it doesn't work for several reasons.

1. None of these tropes were doe as pairs, the similarities have been added onto them.
2. The tropes have been considered a group for years, long before I decided to make this thread.
3. The reason these tropes keep coming back to the TRS is because one or two are dealt with at a time. The definitions are modified to match whatever the TRS thread resolved, changing the trope from the original vision.
4. Point-in-case, Stone Wall was defined as +Defense, -Attack before this thread. The current page still has the trope left at +Defense only. Several of the other tropes are in similar condition.

It's not that your idea is bad, it's that the tropes themselves are so badly mangled that even following your plan would still involve a LOT of wick fixing in the trope pages, and the current plan is based on ideas that the TRS had even before the current thread.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I believe the action we're going with is actually moving them further away from being a group, right? In the past, they've had these◊ as page images, which...yeah...a little much.

Glass Cannons sacrifice defense for offense, Fragile Speedsters sacrifice defense for mobility, Mighty Glaciers sacrifice speed for buff-ness. Then we have the Stone Wall that sacrifices offense for defense, and we've voted to rename that one to something that sounds less...inanimate, but we haven't come up with anything good yet.

Other than that, there have been talks about creating other, similar tropes about gaining an advantage at the cost of a drawback, because finding patterns is what we do—but that's technically within the purview of YKTTW and not a repair action, so we can resolve this thread without them if they don't build up enough steam to launch, and we don't need to spend a lot of time chattering about them here. (And I totally agree that we don't need a trope for every permutation.)

Is that about right as a summary?

edited 28th Sep '13 8:24:33 PM by troacctid

Rhymes with "Protracted."

We also have the generalists tropes to fix the same way. After I wake up, I'm quoting you in the first post. That's a great summary.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Jack of All Stats is average in every area while excelling in none. Master of All excels in all areas, with no weaknesses. Master of None is below average in everything. Joke Character is deliberately underpowered because it's not meant to be a serious character. Jack of All Trades is skilled in a wide variety of disciplines and can do a little of everything. Renaissance Man is a subtrope of Jack of All Trades for characters who are not just competent but experts in multiple fields.

Does that clear up the Subtle Trope Distinctions well enough?

Rhymes with "Protracted."

They have to be applied, not just stated. And you didn't actually make a distinction between Master of None and Joke Character. I've seen a suggestion of In-Universe mocking to distinguish them.

Stone Wall names:

• Shield Warrior
• Toothless Turtle
• Toothless Tank

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Oops, forgot about that.

edited 29th Sep '13 2:30:02 PM by shiro_okami

Turtle implies slow as well as well-defended, which is exactly the same problem that Stone Wall has.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Wasn't thinking about it. Was re-reading the thread, and pulled a few terms getting tossed around before the rename crowner went up.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Joke Character doesn't need to be underpowered in everything, just underpowered overall. Master of None doesn't need to be humorous or deliberate.

(There are very few Joke Characters on the actual Master of None page, for the record.)

edited 30th Sep '13 9:19:00 AM by troacctid

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Lot of discussion here since the last time I checked the thread, a lot of it going over ground that I've already pretty well put my two cents in on, so I'll confine myself to saying that I agree with @crazysamaritan that splitting Mighty Glacier is likely to be a better solution than creating two entirely new tropes.