History Main / SmashMook

** The Sloth-possessed skeletons wield two-handed weapons and also fit the trope well. Human two-handers go beyond trope's limits, however, as they're able to use powerful Sunder Arms and Sunder Armor debuffs. That and they're frequently Champions with [[MakeMeWannaShout War Cry]], too.

** Among the Heroes, this title goes to the Alliance Mountain King, whose skills are "Smash harder and stun every once in a while" "Throw a hammer that stuns and hits hard" and "Smash ground hard" as well as "Become bigger and immune to magic". The Horde's Tauren Chieftain, whose skills are "Smash ground to cause linear shockwave" "Smash ground to stun nearby enemies" "Make self and nearby allies go fast" and "Come back to life in order to smash again". The Undead Crypt Lord and Night Elf Demon Hunter are less-singleminded but still smashing-oriented heroes. Ideally, these heroes just try and get into a big pileup fight make a mess of nearby enemies.

* ''VideoGame/RuneScape'': For a long time, all bosses were this... and all monsters behave like that. Monsters attack you until you die, they die, or they can't get to you if they're solely melee monsters. They had only up to three options: Smash with melee, shoot projectiles, shoot magic, and the only thing that changed was power. [=TzTok=]-Jad, the strongest boss of the times, level 702 (players get up to 138 maximum as a comparison) does only the two latter, the former if you stand next to him, and summons healers once at half health, which is unique. The battle effectively degenerates to switching invulnerability-giving protection prayers in time to protect against missiles and magic respectively. The next strongest boss, the Corporeal Beast, is a breakthrough due to its ability to target an area, from which players have to run away. The Barrelchest, a robot-like being with [[WetwareCPU eyes and brain in a glass dome controlling it]], also only smashes the player with [[AnchorsAway his (?) anchor]]. The fact he bypasses prayers and can hit the ground to produce damage to the player makes the battle a damage race. The new generation of bosses, in form of Dungeoneering, has most bosses have some gimmick to avert this trope. The result isn't really a success. It does invert the trope, though - Astea Frostweb summons spiders, uses prayers and freezes the player in place to walk away, all of which are player-accessible tactics everywhere else, while the player is generally just trying to mangle her with weapons. On the other side, bosses like the [[CarryABigStick Rammernaut]], the behemoths sans [[ThatOneBoss Stomp]], [[FrictionlessIce Plane-Freezer Lakhrahnaz]] and pretty much any boss that requires a method to make him vulnerable rather than having a special attack play this straight.

** Giants, found in several armies, have no ranged attacks or special abilities of any sort -- their battle strategy is to simply amble over to the enemy and start swinging their clubs. This makes them potentially very powerful units in the early game, as their high attack and high health pools allow them to efficiently mulch their way through infantry or low-level cavalry, but they struggle in the late game due to having few defenses against good ranged units and lacking the flight, speed or breath weapons of high-tier monsters.

** Servant Berserker embraces this trope. His "Mad Enhancement" skill [[LightningBruiser boosts all of his stats]] at the cost of leaving him too insane to use any of his other skills, leaving 'hit it very very hard' as his only option as far as attacks go. He can, however, hit so hard that even if you dodge the air pressure can still kill you. While a Servant's Noble Phantasm is normally a powerful magic weapon, his "God Hand" is his own body and lets him NoSell just about anything you throw at him (he wields a random slab of rock instead).
** ''Literature/FateZero'': Averted by the Berserker, whose "Eternal Arms Mastery" ability prevents him from losing his weapon skills due to mental influence (including Mad Enhancement). He also has the ability to turn any item he holds, including machine guns and broken telephone poles, into a low-ranked Noble Phantasm, or even steal Noble Phantasms from other Servants and use them at the Rank they originally were.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'': In the first game, Pinkies fill this role. Their only strategy is to run in and bite their target, a predictable pattern that makes lone ones easy to juke or even punch to death with the non-berserk fist, time-consuming as it may be. But in mixed enemy groups, they shield other ranged and potentially more dangerous hellspawn from being targeted, they move faster than any other monster, and can take a good amount of damage from regular weapons -- dozens of bullets or up to three shotgun shells to take down just one, and even if the rocket launcher kills them in one shot, a barrage of rockets will still not beat back even a small flock of them before they close in enough to be a [[HoistByHisOwnPetard facerocket]] hazard. Spectres, a [[UndergroundMonkey variant]] with a permanent [[StealthyMook partial invisibility effect]], is exactly the same, but used less often as a frontliner and more of an ambush enemy in darker locations.

* ''VideoGame/HardReset'': Gorilla robots. They love {{Knockback}}, and have two attacks: either they charge at you like a bull, or they use a ShockwaveStomp. The latter will still be executed even if they’re otherwise paralysed with shotgun’s secondary fire.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'': Super Mutants, with a few [[GeniusBruiser notable exceptions]], are dim-witted brutes with a propensity for close-range physical violence. This is especially true for the behemoths, mutants from the east coast populations who have become ''very'' big, ''very'' aggressive and ''very'' stupid as they aged, and who can typically be found wielding uprooted fire hydrants as makeshift clubs.

[[quoteright:300:[[VideoGame/DragonQuest https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cyclops_dqviii.png]]]]

* ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'': There are easily a dozen kinds in a few games, even if a lot are {{Palette Swap}}s. The page image is the Cyclops, which debuted as an end-game mook from ''VideoGame/DragonQuestII''.

* ''VideoGame/{{WorldOfWarcraft}}'':

* ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'':
** Knights in ''Warcraft III'', one of the few units in the game with ''no abilities whatsoever''. They just have high speeds, high armor and a strong attack, and all they do is move and attack. No druidic spells or stealth like Night Elven units, no self-healing abilities like Undead units, no pillage or physical abilities like many Orc units, no arcane tricks like the Blood Elves, and no guns-and-rocketry-based gimmicks like the Dwarves. Even the Knights' early-game counterparts, the humble Footmen, have a special ability, Defend. However, they ''are'' one of the very few units that have [[LightningBruiser increased speed]] that lets them run circles around enemy armies, letting them retreat from bad fights or press the advantage against a retreating enemy, grabbing up a few more kills, or sent to take out enemy supply lines before running out.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'': In the first game, Pinkies fill this role. Their only strategy is to run in and bite their target, a predictable pattern that makes lone ones easy to juke or even punch to death with the non-berserk fist, time-consuming as it may be. But in mixed enemy groups, they shield other ranged and potentially more dangerous hellspawn from being targeted, they move faster than any other monster, and can take a good amount of damage from regular weapons -- dozens of bullets or up to three shotgun shells to take down just one, and even if the rocket launcher kills them in one shot, a barrage of rockets will still not beat back even a small flock of them before they close in enough to be a [[HoistByHisOwnPetard facerocket]] hazard. Spectres, a [[UndergroundMonkey variant]] with a permanent [[StealthyMook partial invisibility effect]], is exactly the same, but used less often.

* ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'':
** Knights in ''Warcraft III'', one of the few units in the game with ''no abilities whatsoever''. They just have high speeds, high armor and a strong attack, and all they do is move and attack. No druidic spells or stealth like Night Elven units, no self-healing abilities like Undead units, no pillage or physical abilities like many Orc units, no arcane tricks like the Blood Elves, and no guns-and-rocketry-based gimmicks like the Dwarves. Even the Knights' early-game counterparts, the humble Footmen, have a special ability, Defend. However, they ''are'' one of the very few units that have [[LightningBruiser increased speed]] that lets them run circles around enemy armies, letting them retreat from bad fights or press the advantage against a retreating enemy, grabbing up a few more kills, or sent to take out enemy supply lines before running out.
** Among the Heroes, this title goes to the Alliance Mountain King, whose skills are "Smash harder and stun every once in a while" "Throw a hammer that stuns and hits hard" and "Smash ground hard" as well as "Become bigger and immune to magic". The Horde's Tauren Chieftain, whose skills are "Smash ground to cause linear shockwave" "Smash ground to stun nearby enemies" "Make self and nearby allies go fast" and "Come back to life in order to smash again". The Undead Crypt Lord and Night Elf Demon Hunter are less-singleminded but still smashing-oriented heroes. Ideally, these heroes just try and get into a big pileup fight make a mess of nearby enemies.
** Ogres are quite common enemies in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''. Whether they're level 20 or 70 all they do is hit you with something ("Me smash! You die!"). Then again, so do most normal mobs in the game (although most humanoid enemies tend to have at least some variety). Sometimes they have disarm, knockback or cleave attacks, but then they are usually recognizable for having a different model. Lower level of this type of mobs do nothing but autoattacking you, and they start adding more varieties to the attacks as you progress the dungeon levels such by adding interrupt, stun, Mortal Strike, Whirlwind, enrage, or add some magic to the attacks.

* ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'': Gravity Hammer-wielding Brutes. In ''VideoGame/Halo2'', regular Brutes turn into this when they [[TurnsRed go berserk]], dropping their weapons and attempting to smash you with their fists.

These are very common as a WakeUpCallBoss, as they represent an opportunity for players to learn that [[AttackAttackAttack fighting the enemy head-on]] doesn't always work, and in order to counter these mighty brutes, one has to resort to advanced tricks -- in essence, they're meant to teach you not to fight like a Smash Mook yourself by being better at it than you. Typical strategies for dealing with them include HitAndRunTactics, bogging the enemy down with StatusEffects, [[BullfightBoss exploiting their charges against them]] or [[BossArenaIdiocy luring them towards environmental hazards]]. If the Smash Mook fights as a part of a group, it might be a good idea to stay clear of him so you can ShootTheMedicFirst, then come back for him when he's alone and weakened.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfSpyroDawnOfTheDragon'':
*** While most grublin variants are small, agile, and relatively fragile, and provided with varied skills such as flight, acrobatic agility or projectile weapons, a couple variants stand out for their much more brutish and direct fighting methods, as well as their much greater size, strength and toughness.

** ''LightNovel/FateZero'': Averted by the Berserker, whose "Eternal Arms Mastery" ability prevents him from losing his weapon skills due to mental influence (including Mad Enhancement). He also has the ability to turn any item he holds, including machine guns and broken telephone poles, into a low-ranked Noble Phantasm, or even steal Noble Phantasms from other Servants and use them at the Rank they originally were.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfSpyroDawnOfTheDragon'': While most grublin variants are small, agile, and relatively fragile, and provided with varied skills such as flight, acrobatic agility or projectile weapons, a couple variants stand out for their much more brutish and direct fighting methods, as well as their much greater size, strength and toughness.