- 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).
- The Battletech universe:
- The Hunchback IIc BattleMech exemplifies this trope. It mounts two Ultra Autocannon-20s which, more or less, is apocalyptic firepower for any 'Mech (each Ultra AC can do 40 damage, which will destroy any mech its weight or less with a center hit, and a pair of ER Medium lasers add to the firepower), but sacrifices almost all of its armor in order to do so. Little wonder it's popular with Death Seeker Mechwarriors. In fact, a recent sourcebook clarifies: It was made as pretty much the Clan's equivalent of a Death sentence. Any warrior assigned to a Hunchback IIc is explicitly not expected to come back from their next battle.
- 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. 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!
- See also the Hollander family. The original was a 35-tonner packing a mighty Gauss Rifle... and only that. With only four tons of armor for protection, it can barely take a hit from its own weapon. Other variants tried to mitigate this with limited success, but a few actually doubled down on it. One variant of the 45-ton Hollander II carried a Heavy Gauss Rifle, but had so little armor it stood a chance of killing itself every time it firednote .
- A lot of "support" 'mechs, like the classic Archer or the frankly ridonkulous-looking Yeoman, will mount a lot of long range weapons like LRMs, but have little armor or weapons for close-and-dirty combat.
- There are a few vehicles like this, such as the Hetzer Wheeled Assault Gun, effectively a rehash of a World War II design, and the tiny 5-ton Savannah Master — the fact that it was deliberately designed to take on enemy Battlemechs has to count for something. Neither design has much armor, but both have a lot of firepower for their size. The Savannah Master has the firepower and speed to equal to a 'Mech four times its size, but can be destroyed by a single laser hit from its own gun. Meanwhile, the Hetzer is larger and slower, but mounts a huge, dangerous 200 millimeter autocannon in its hull that has a chance to bring down even the mightiest of 'Mechs with a single hit — without giving it more than a token amount of armor to cover its fragile, boxy hull.
- In the novels particularly, the old Inner Sphere Rifleman 'mech is notorious as a deathtrap, with rear armor 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.
- The Hellbringer (Loki) Omni is another fine example of a machine that will slaughter most enemies in its weight class and down if they get too close, but will crumple and burn if anything with a decent gun looks at it funny. Its configurations focus on massed long range hitting power, with things like particle cannons, Gauss rifles, and autocannons coming into play. The primary variant is a highly accurate killing machine with enough firepower on it to literally slag four tons of armor in a single salvo and even includes various equipment upgrades like ECM or anti missile defenses. At 65 tons and with only 8 tons of armor, though, while it is slightly better protected than the aforementioned Hunchback IIc, it'll have an extremely bad day if a sufficiently armed 'Mech draws a bead on it. It's so light on armor that it actually can't even absorb an AC/20 shot dead center — something that more than a few 15-tons-lighter 'Mechs can do.
- The Adder/Puma is another high grade glass cannon. Its primary configuration carries dual ER-PPC weapons and includes a targeting computer to make them highly accurate. Any 'Mech who takes a Boom, Headshot! from one of those guns is down for the count, no matter the size of it. The Adder, however, is all of 35 tons, has about 6 tons of armor, and generally isn't going to stick around very long once an enemy sniffs it out.
- The Cougar is, if anything, even more extreme than the Adder. While weighing the same 35 tons, its armor is pared down to just five and a half tons, and its speed is further cut to levels more often seen on Clan 'Mechs twice its size, making it less capable of dodging attacks. In exchange, it now boasts a full nineteen tons of firepower, meaning that over 50% of this thing is guns. Its basic configuration carries two highly accurate long-ranged lasers and a pair of long range missile racks. One of its alternate models matches the Adder exactly for deadliness with its dual PPC loadout, while another is a perfect copy of the Archer, a highly respected Inner Sphere 'Mech that is twice the size of a Cougar.
- The Excalibur is a mighty-looking machine and boasts both a Gauss rifle and a long range missile pack in its primary configuration. It even moves at a healthy 86 kph, impressive for a 70-ton 'Mech. It buys that mobility and long-range prowess with a woefully thin seven and a half tons of armor, enough to weather one or two light missile barrages, but not enough to survive repeated fire from bigger guns like a PPC or a 100mm autocannon.
- There's a variant of the Shadow Hawk that adds a second short range missile launcher, a second medium laser, and two more heat sinks to its chassis. This changes the Shadow Hawk from a mediocre Master of None into a respectable barrage vehicle at short range — it can leap into battle and unload all its weapons without too much stress on the heat gauge. The problem is that it buys this firepower in armor, reducing it to an anemic 4.5 tons of armor, less that some 'Mechs half its size... and it still carries four tons of highly volatile missile and autocannon ammunition in its chest, so one unlucky hit could lead to a lot of Stuff Blowing Up.
- 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.
- This is the modus operandi of the Norse team in Blood Bowl. Catchers/Runners get Dauntless to take down opponents far above their own weight class and Blitzers/Berserkers are Exactly What It Says on the Tin. However, every single human team member starts with an Armor Value of 7...the same as a regular goblin. This makes Attack! Attack! Attack! actually a viable strategy for them since they absolutely need to maintain the initiative. If the momentum shifts against them the entire team quickly turns into messy stains on the astrogranite...
- In Chess, the Knight fulfills this role in an interesting way. Every chess piece is a One-Hit-Point Wonder, but Knights have a unique move that allows them to capture pieces without fear of threat and hop over normally-reliable defenses. It's the only piece in the game that can threaten a Queen without being taken in return. However, that unique move happens to be the Knight's only style of movement — meaning if another piece aside from another Knight threatens it, the Knight has no way to fight back aside from fleeing.
- In Diplomacy, Austria and Germany are considered high-risk/high-reward countries to play due to their central location on the board: Germany can be attacked by five out of six rivals in the first year, and Austria is statistically the most likely country to be eliminated in tournament play. However, if Germany is able to form a good alliance (especially with either England or France) and Austria is able to weather the storm and scramble for the Balkans early on, they can become strong contenders for an outright victory. Russia also qualifies for Glass Cannon status due to its size (it starts with one more unit than other players) and tendency to be feast-or-famine in tournament play (it wins outright at a fair clip but is also the second-most likely country eliminated).
- Dungeons & Dragons'
- Magic-Users and Thieves in the early editions of this game were limited both in Hit Points and in the armor that they could use — Thieves were limited to leather armor, while Magic-Users could use no armor whatsoever. While the thief could wield any one-handed or ranged weapon and did double damage to most monsters from behind, the magic-user was limited to staves, daggers and other weapons to compensate for their spellcasting; and at low levels, both classes could not afford to take too many hits at low levels, and indeed were in very real danger of getting one-shotted in their first fight.
- 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.
- 3.5 Rangers gain a number of combat style feats to enable either Dual Wielding or archery, a damage boost from Favored Enemy, and spells like Hunter's Mercy and Blade Storm to up their damage further. It's also quite common to dip into Scout and take Swift Hunter, meaning they receive the benefits of Skirmish's damage boost. However, Rangers are restricted to wearing light armor, their need to boost multiple stats tends to give them middling Constitution, and their HD is a merely average d8 rather than the d10 of Fighters or the d12 of Barbarians. Though not incapable of taking a hit, Rangers really don't like being the only tank character in the group.
- Duskblades utilize a nasty form of Full-Contact Magic that can reduce most level-appropriate foes to dust, but possess virtually no defensive spells, middling HD, and similar armor restrictions to the Ranger.
- Rogues became this with the buffing of Backstab into Sneak Attack, enabling them to output some rather crazy damage against vulnerable or flanked enemies. With proper feat setup and equipment, a Rogue could take down most level-appropriate foes in one round. However, they have the second-worst saves in the game (only Reflex), are limited to light armor, and have poor HD. If they don't assassinate their target in the first round, they tend to struggle. In general, this ethos is common among skill-based characters, with the Ninja, Factotum, Spellthief, and Scout all having similar strengths and weaknesses.
- 5e has fewer intricacies than other editions, but most Arcane casters (aka magic users who do not derive their power from faith or deities) still fit this trope. Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards is in full effect, and spell casters can do some serious damage even at first level, with spells like Magic Missile, which deals little damage but never misses, or Firebolt, which has a higher potential damage output than fighters with short swords at the same level. note . However, most casters have the worst HP of all starting characters, and it's not at all uncommon for such characters to go down in only one or two attacks at low levels.
- The Zealous in Fleets: The Pleiad Conflict has only six health and can't support many consorts, but it not only has eight strength, but its special ability allows it to attack twice, for a whopping sixteen strength attack.
- Lancer:
- The HORUS Pegasus is basically made of guns, and said guns include near-unavoidable Smart Guns that you can rarely stop it from firing, a shapeshifting weapon that can get brutal damage if the Pegasus is lucky, and an eldritch nightmare of a "gun" that doesn't shoot so much as it assigns unavoidable damage with No Saving Throw, among others. It's also heavily loaded with systems that strip away all protections and even twist probability in its favor to make sure that if the Pegasus wants to shoot you in the face and hurt you, it will. But it has mediocre evasion, zero armor and low HP, so anything that actually gets to fire back will put it in a world of pain.
- While the Harrison Armory Tokugawa is nominally a Jack of All Stats under normal conditions, it's not meant to be played that way. Rather, it's meant to be pushed into the Danger Zone from overheating and overclock itself until it takes double damage from everything, and become a whirling nightmare of flames and plasma that melts through everything on the battlefield in moments, hitting with ridiculous amounts of Energy and Burn damage while getting increased range from it. Naturally, if anything survives and scores so much as a glancing blow on it in the midst of its rampage it's going to feel it.
- Legend System: The Sage and Shaman classes. Courtesy of their numerous and powerful spell-like abilities, Sages can put out a lot of pain from both close-up and at a distance, on top of their considerable crowd-control and support options, but a poor BAB combined with No Self-Buffs means they're rather fragile if an enemy actually manages to get through the onslaught. Shamans, meanwhile, can inflict staggeringly high single-target damage via their Imbue Spell ability, but suffer from many of the same durability problems as the Sage. Legend being what it is, both of these classes can become less squishy (or more in exchange for more power) via multiclassing.
- Magic: The Gathering:
- There are plenty of creature cards that have high power, but low toughness. Red in particular has many creatures with very low toughness, but higher power. Since this color is more about dealing as much damage to its opponent as quickly as possible, its creatures don't need to survive, just take a few shots in.
- A number of Illusion creatures are designed to hit hard, but die as soon as they're targeted by anything.
- The card Glass Golem
seems to deliberately invoke this trope, with its glass theme, 6 power and 2 toughness. - Rocket Launcher and its later cleaned-up cousin Goblin Cannon can deal damage, but get destroyed just by being used.
- Force of Savagery is an extreme example. It has massive power but zero toughness so it automatically dies when it enters the battlefield unless its toughness is being passively boosted, and even then it's probably going to be frail.
- Perhaps the most extreme example lies with Master of Cruelties. It has a moderate Toughness of 4, and a mediocre Power of 1, and can only attack alone without backup. However, it also packs First Strike and Death Touch, thus becoming instant death to any creature that blocks it. Even worse, if its attack connects without being blocked, the unfortunate player's life total instantly drops to 1.
- Coinshots in Mistborn Adventure Game. Just like in the source material, these guys can essentially become human machine-guns, but they have no defensive powers and inferior Health when compared to an unpowered character.
- Mobile Frame Zero: Equipping two weapon systems in the same range band, such as two direct-fire or artillery-range weapons, gives a frame access to an eight-sided red die, which significantly increases both accuracy and damage (since blue dice are pretty much never above 6, a 7 or 8 on that D8 is a guaranteed hit even before a spot is added). However, because a mobile frame can only mount four systems, and there are four kinds of system (weapons, defenses, sensors/comms and movement), this means there has to be a tradeoff in other areas compared to a Jack of All Trades Soldier, which can include forfeiting armour. One of the most common units for people to bring, dubbed Recon By Fire by the fanbase, is a frame with two artillery-range weapons and two spotting systems, which is capable of dishing out considerable damage at long range while marking targets with spot dice for further punishment, but relies upon keeping a safe distance from enemies, lurking behind cover or bodyguard units, and praying for good results on its white dice when it comes to actually staying alive, especially since weapon ranges are exclusive and thus any unit within direct fire range cannot be hit by its artillery.
- Dark Pokémon in the Pokémon Trading Card Game, when introduced, had very low HP but either high damage, low Energy requirements, or useful effects. This trait was cast aside in "EX Team Rocket Returns," however, as the Dark Pokémon in that set were just as hardy as anything else. Nevertheless, there are still a few specific species of Pokémon whose HP are lower than other fully evolved Pokémon from their sets but make up for it with other means, such as Raticate, Delcatty, Castform, and Durant.
- Princess: The Hopeful: The Court of Storms has access to a number of Charms that can enhance a Princess's attacks or let her make a Counter-Attack when harmed in various ways, but at the cost of disabling any defensive Charms she may possess. In addition, some of Storms' best attack Charms are Cast from Hit Points, and Storms' Invocation and Practical Magic mean that a Princess of Storms actually gets more powerful when seriously injured.
- In Sentinels of the Multiverse, several of the heroes have low HP, numerous self-damaging effects, and low or action-intensive damage resistance, but can dish out staggering amounts of damage.
- Chrono-Ranger focuses on multiple low-damage pings that he buffs with his Bounty ongoings. He can also pick up Hunter and Hunted, which can, in max-bounty conditions, buff his damage output by 6 per individual shot (which can also give him, say, a 12-damage irreducible shot with the Masadah as a power use)...but also gives every attack directed at him +6 damage, which combines with his underwhelming HP to mean that you probably don't want to do this unless it's the end of the game.
- Absolute Zero and Nightmist are actually very effective tanks... if they can get their key equipment out and keep it out. If they can't, then their playstyles, which rely around punching themselves in the face in various ways, will end very, very badly for them.
- The Wraith has very little damage resistance, a HP in the mid-twenties, and is very dependent on her equipment. When said equipment is out, even without buffs from anyone else, she can deal a surprising amount of damage.
- Setback is a heavily randomised hero, who can, with the right cards out, potentially have the best heal in the game; he has an Ongoing that puts him on a HP equal to his Unlucky pool when he would otherwise die. He also has cards that cause him to hit himself as well as the enemy, cards that give him bonuses but cause him to take damage if his Unlucky pool gets too high, and an Ongoing that gives him bonus damage equal to 1/3 of his Unlucky pool, but also increases damage directed at him by the same amount, which can lead to the right card play at high Unlucky doing 15+ damage.
- Fanatic tends to take risks with her HP and rely on her life-restoring armour and access to healing effects to avoid this being lethal; Sacrosanct Martyr and her Prime Wardens version's power, in particular, reduce her HP in exchange for damage output or free plays/power uses, and another card of hers lets her discard 3 to deal damage equal to the health she's lost — one of the few cards that can deal over 20 damage in one shot without any buffs at all, but only if she's on the edge of death.
- Lifeline relies heavily on cards that deal at least a little damage to him, and can choose to lean into the high-risk, high-reward playstyle with Cosmic Immolation, a +2 boost to all damage he deals and takes. The 1-3 turns you'll have with him after pulling that one will be destructive indeed, and then he will be twisted into a pretzel.
- KNYFE has a few cards that hurt her for extra plays/power uses, extremely weak defensive options such as damage reduction that only works against one enemy, no healing...and the ability to hit like a truck. She actually has a reasonable HP pool, but this is offset by all of her other defensive vulnerabilities.
- Star Fleet Battles has:
- Fast Patrol Ships (formerly known as Pseudo-Fighters). They can carry devastating armament, but their shields are paper-thin. The rules even refer to them as "eggshells armed with sledgehammers." PFs with Warp Booster Packs gain extra warp-engine power, which they can pump into their weapons for an even bigger punch, but are even more vulnerable to enemy fire.
- Star Wars Battlefront: Han Solo is a glass cannon. He carries his most powerful pistol in the galaxy the DL-44 Blaster Pistol. He can overpower his enemies in great distances. He has three outstanding output abilities: 1) Rapid Fire: A long range ability to let him rapidly fire repeatedly without over heating against group of enemies. 2) Lucky Shot: A long ranged charge up blaster so powerful it can break Darth Vader lightsaber blocks and it can lock on soldiers and vehicles. It can lock and take out a group of Imperial starfighters in a single shot. 3) Shoulder Charge: A short-ranged ability let Han Solo to lower his shoulder into his enemy to apply damage. But his terrible defense dooms him in any melee engagement.
- Many of the aircraft carriers in Victory in the Pacific are this, with low armor factors and airstrike with a bonus die-roll modifier representing the highly-trained pilots, but most notable is the Japanese carrier Hiryu, the sole fleet carrier with an armor factor of only 1.
- Touch Of Evil: The schoolteacher only has three hit points and no healing factor. However, loading her inventory up with books adds two additional fight dice per book. Collecting all the books on the board gives her three hit points...and up to twenty-two dice's worth of damage. By the game's mechanics, that's theoretically enough to one-shot Cthulhu.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- The Eldar factions often overlap this with Fragile Speedster.
- The Dark Eldar are more of Glass Cannons than the Craftworld Eldar, given the amount of firepower that squads of Dark Eldar can pump out for a relatively low cost and the eschewing of even what little armor their cousins use.
- Harlequins are even more of a glass hammer/cannon than other Eldar. Absolutely unparalleled in hand-to-hand combat, they can rip right through a unit of Assault Terminators like tissue paper; but one good round of shooting from a basic Marine squad and they're splattered all over the landscape.
- The Space Marine Thunderfire cannon. In fact, all artillery pieces were like this prior to 6th edition. 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+ armor save, but if the cannon itself is hit, either a penetrating hit or glancing hit will completely destroy it (until 6th edition, when artillery guns were given a very strong Toughness value of 7 and two "wound points"). But it has a range of 60', and puts out four explosive shells per turn.
- Tau Fire Warriors, who are no tougher than Guard Stormtroopers and suck in close combat. However, they're armed with a gun that will punch through Stormtrooper armor, the Stormtrooper wearing the armor, and keep going out the back.
- Stormtroopers hellguns can punch right through Space Marine armor. Too bad for the shorter than normal range.
- The Tau's Vespid allies overlap this with Fragile Speedster. They have a gun that can blast clean through Space Marine armor from 18" away, and can move reasonably quickly, but even with T4 and a 4+ armor save, they still go down like chumps to even a brief encounter with heavy bolter fire.
- Ork Boyz: they have a massive amount of attacks for a rank-and-file trooper (three attacks per Boy, four on the charge), and... paper thin armor. Kinda balanced out by their ridiculously low point cost, but when they get showered by bolter fire, expect a lot of Boyz to drop.
- Most daemons pack a punch, but die like flies against standard Imperial weaponry because their "armor" is intentionally designed to be fickle. They have a 33% chance of surviving anti-starship weapons, but a 67% chance of dying to a single small-arms round to the face.
- The Imperial Guard Hellhound. Most Imperial Guard vehicles are Mighty Glacier, but the Hellhound, for all the flamethrowers it mounts, can go up with a mild hit due to the tanks being hit.
- The Rogue Trader rulebook specifically describes Raider-class spacecraft as "glass cannons, able to throw out heavy fire but unable to take it in return".
- Eldar and Dark Eldar spacecraft in Battlefleet Gothic have wimpy armor, no shields, ridiculously powerful engines, and some of the nastiest guns possible.
- Most walkers, due to them having medium to light armor all around, as opposed to the incredibly tough front armor and weaker side and back armors of conventional tanks. The Penitent Engine and Ork Killa Kans in particular have it bad, as their armor is no better than the lightest transports in the game (the Penitent Engine is an open topped vehicle too). The only aversion so far is the Soul Grinder, which has near land-raider levels of armor while packing very effective guns and devastating melee capability (its only real weakness is everything else in the army tends to suck).
- Imperial and Renegade Knights are devastating weapon platforms capable of wielding rapid-fire battle cannons and massive gatling guns simultaneously. However, they only have an armour value of about 13 and their ion shield can only protect one facing at a time. On top of this, the absolute cheapest Knight is about 325pts and only has six hull points, about twice that of the much tinier Space Marine Dreadnought; the kitted-out ones can close in on 500 points, still with only six hull.
- The Chaos Forgefiend with three ectoplasma cannons is capable of tearing through heavily armoured elite forces in seconds — its blasts can disintegrate entire squads of Grey Knight Terminators. However, those same cannons are prone to overheating and damaging its hull, which is comparatively fragile at 3 Hull Points for a 200 point unit.
- The Eldar factions often overlap this with Fragile Speedster.
- Warhammer Fantasy has a few. Night Goblin Fanatics follow it the best — they deal the same damage as a giant catapult but are even easier to kill than a normal goblin and have a chance of killing themselves. There are, however, many others.
- Wood Elves are similar to 40K's Eldar, being both this and Fragile Speedsters. They have little to no armor but can give out a lot of hurt with possibly the best core units compared to their prices.
- High Elves have very few units with toughness higher than 3, but they make up for it with Speed of Asuryan, gaining attack bonuses if their Initiative score is higher... and at 5 initiative on most of them, it usually is. This rule also ignores striking order penalties for weapons, so they can wield whopping weapons willy-nilly at no penalty.
- Wizard 101: Storm wizards have tremendous single and area-of-effect attack spells, but their HP and defense are terribly low.
- X-Wing Miniatures:
- The TIE Phantom has a massive four-die main attack, the only ship in its size class with such a statistic, and can take the potent Crew and System upgrades. On the other hand, when uncloaked, it is no more durable than a humble Z-95 that costs considerably less. The dominant Phantom build, when Phantoms are run at all, is specced around getting to a high Pilot skill, taking an upgrade that lets you cloak after attacking, and praying that you get initiative so you can get that precious +2 Agility to make you die slightly slower.
- Arc-dodger ships, such as the TIE Interceptor, combine this and Fragile Speedster. An Interceptor has forward weapons on par with an X-Wing (although no torpedo or missile options), but has the same defensive stats as a TIE Fighter that costs less than half as much. However, what it does have is pilots like Soontir Fel who specialise in high mobility. As a result, you typically see them run as sneaky bushwhackers who hover in the enemy blind spots, smacking them around with impunity.
- The Protectorate Starfighter, AKA Fang Fighter, from the Scum and Villainy faction is statted like an arc dodger, and can be run as such...but most of its named pilots and upgrades focus on getting into nose-to-nose brawls, which is a difficult position for such a fragile ship to be in, especially since that playstyle also tends to make their moves easy to predict - an enemy can easily infer that Fenn Rau is going to try and close to point blank and set up to point a whole bunch of guns at the spot he's going to be in for a quick and efficient kill.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- This was the standard design philosophy for an ace card roughly until Stardust Dragon showed up: a card with 2800 ATK or more, with an effect that lets it kill even more monsters and do even more damage than its ATK score would suggest, and no protection or negation abilities whatsoever. The most infamous examples should probably be the Chaos monsters, which can easily knock off half your opponent's LP in a single turn on their own, but fold like a wet paper bag to a garden-variety Bottomless Trap Hole or Sakuretsu Armor. To this day, many older archetypes, such as HEROes, Batterymen, Ancient Gears, and Cyber Dragons, fit into the mold of "can kill an opponent in one turn, will probably lose if they fail to do so."
- As of 2020, this role falls to Gren Maju da Eiza — its effect lets it obtain a truly ludicrous ATK value of 400 for every banished card (when there are individual cards that can banish 10-15 of your cards upon being played, that adds up fast), which is particularly impressive for a level 3 monster with no summoning restrictions. However, Gren Maju has no protective effects of any kind, which means that it can be killed easily the moment the opponent takes their turn. Most Gren Maju decks are all about removing enough of the opponent's defenses for Gren Maju to take a swing, which will probably kill the opponent in one hit.
- There are various cards, like Goblin Attack Force, Indomitable Fighter Lei Lei, Spear Dragon, and Mad Archfiend that have incredibly high ATK, but zero DEF and move into defense position when it is time for your opponent to strike.
- Clear Vice Dragon has double the ATK of the monster it's attacking. When it's not attacking, it has 0 ATK.
- Similarly, Metalmorph gives the equipped card a massive attack boost, but only while attacking.
- Dragon Master Knight has a titanic ATK stat and an effect that makes it stronger, but it has no defenses whatsoever from card effects.
- Berserk Dragon has 3500 ATK and 0 DEF, which would already qualify it for this trope. However, it goes the extra mile, with an insanely strong offensive effect (can attack all cards your opponent controls) and a tendency to fold quickly if it doesn't knock out the opponent in one shot, due to growing weaker every turn it's on the field.
- When Armityle the Chaos Phantasm is attacking, it has 10,000 ATK; the second highest fixed number in the entire game, and twice as high as the highest-ATK monster in the game. When it's not attacking, it has zero — and on top of that, it can't be destroyed by battle, meaning the opponent can keep attacking it over and over as if they were hitting you directly.
- Many monsters have effects that increase their ATK but not their DEF — Tyranno Infinity, for instance, gains 1000 ATK for every banished Dinosaur, meaning it can go up to flatly ridiculous values, but its DEF is always 0. For the most part, this doesn't actually impact survivability as much as you'd think, as monsters only use DEF while in Defense Mode.
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