Crossovers
- Lightning Bolt is one of these in Ace Combat: The Equestrian War. She is the only pony of the main heroines to have a powerful special attack (Shining Spark), but she is prone to being injured during prolonged battles.
- 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.
- In Avenger Goddess, HYDRA's super-weapon, Mjölnir, is explicitly described as this; it might be a vast cannon capable of destroying an entire city with one tesseract-energy-powered shot, but it can be destroyed with little more than standard explosives in the right place.
- Child of the Storm:
- Most mortal magical practitioners — and, indeed, powerful mutants — as being this: they can deal out a lot of damage, even reshape the world in the case of high end examples like Magneto. However, as is repeatedly emphasised, if someone gets in close and knows what they're doing (or if they're disarmed), then they are in serious trouble.
- Harry is a particular example after his powers start to kick in around chapter 60 of the first book, making him Flying Firepower, even after he technically becomes Made of Iron, because he's operating on such a high level (as in, against Omega Class opponents) that it takes at least standard Asgardian level durability to compete defensively. It's indicated during a temporary Plot-Relevant Age-Up that he'll become more of a Flying Brick, with time.
- In Fractured, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands crossover, some starships rely on their BFG destroying all opposition before it can shoot back, having only light armor. In the sequel, Origins, Jack and Brick start off this way with their teaching style, only to realize later on how problematic the technique could be.
- Both Yoruichi and Tatsuki in Game and Bleach
hit hard but can't take as much damage, especially Yoruichi. While Tatsuki has far higher health and comparable physical stats (barring dexterity where Yoruichi has over three times as much) each blow Yoruichi lands takes out over a third of her health, despite Yoruichi holding back and deliberately aiming for Tatsuki's armor. On the other hand, a single blow by Tatsuki takes out all of Yoruichi's health and leaves her unconscious.- Ichigo's hollow form doesn't have the best defenses but it has a very powerful Cero. As a result, most of his fights start and end by him firing a Cero at his enemy.
- In The Games We Play, the White Tiger style offers massive boosts to offence and mobility, but no buffs to defence. It left practitioners capable of dealing lots of damage, but being no tougher than an ordinary human. This was only slightly mitigated by the later development of the White Tiger's Hide, and is exacerbated by the Cast from Hit Points nature of the style's two strongest skills. As a result, while a master of the style is a tiger, tiger burning bright, he will not last the night. Jaune gets around this problem by picking up other defensive skills.
- Gray Ghost in Manehattan's Lone Guardian is this, at least from the perspective of Leviathan herself as opposed to other ponies. The latter notes before their exhibition match that one good hit from her would be liable to seriously injure Gray, if not kill her. Gray's assorted abilities—including flight and limited intangibility—let her hit hard and fast while circumventing conventional defenses, but without Shining Armor's shield, she stands little chance in a fight against one of Neo Arcadia's Guardians.
- Kyril's four apprentices from The Night Unfurls deconstruct this trope in a nice way. On paper, Sanakan, Hugh, Lily and Soren are empowered Hunters with both strength and reflexes above the average sentient being. The four are more than capable of severing body parts, even killing most enemies in one hit thanks to their trick weaponry and firearms. However, they lack armour and shields, so they are in risk of incapacitation or even death should they take damage directly. In fact, the former case does happen to three out of the four apprentices oncenote . In practice, the inability to tank hits is compensated by the emphasis of mobility (dodging), with the occasional usage of stealth and support healing (aka. HP recovery). Adding to how the four are rigorously trained in the way of a typical Bloodborne player Hunter, the result is that these four Hunters turn out to be absolute powerhouses in battle, their defence be damned, simply because they are NOT going to get hit in the first place. In other words, The Night Unfurls takes apart the negative aspect of the Glass Cannon trope (the "poor defence" part), showing how this aspect, hence the trope, is not as bad as one would think.
- Midori is one in Seven Days Survivor, as per Word of God and comments from the other characters. Minato explicitly includes a dedicated healer (Either himself or Yukari) on the team when Midori is in play simply to keep her up.
- Callista in The Zero Context Series has reality warping, speed, obscene cutting power and versatile weaponry that give her a tremendous leg up on her opposition, but anyone capable of matching her speed can easily demolish her in 2-4 hits.
- Vow of the King: While using Eikō no Yari, Ichigo has enough offensive power to generate Razor Wind with every strike and slice up even captain level enemies from a distance. But he also sacrifices all of his defensive ability to do so. As his first time using it is against the far stronger and more experienced Unohana, she outright states using such a technique was a mistake.
- Forward puts an emphasis on River being one of these; she's portrayed as fast and powerful, but one good hit puts her down, which happens several times in the story.
- Harry and Luna in Metagaming? have diverse skills and are, respectively, an archmage and a high priestess whose abilities outstrip pretty much everyone who isn't a faction leader. However, they come from a world with so little magic that the two have functionally no magical resistance at all, so a Curse of Agony that would be rather painful for anyone else is more excruciating than the Cruciatus Curse to Harry. Furthermore, their artificial bodies were indestructible on Westeros but now are merely fairly durable, with Onyxia dealing significant damage to Luna's ribs and spine with a single blow.
- Jen in Princess of the Blacks has functionally infinite magical reserves due to being able to channel the Earth's magic, only limited by how much she can channel at once. However, not having a magical core of her own makes her far more vulnerable to others magic. A spell designed to have someone instantly awake and alert sends her into an adrenaline fueled panic.
- In Queen of All Oni, the old Oni rulers fit this. While the magic snake they conjured to attack Tarakudo was impressive, due to their advanced age and decaying power, he was easily able to stop it and kill them.
- Steve Rogers' eventual fate in The Hell that was Given after being shot with tranq darts filled with an antidote for the Hydra Super Serum. While Steve keeps his strength and speed, he loses the fortitude he gained and goes back to being an asthmatic with a weak heart, so using his abilities causes a near fatal asthmatic episode.
- Mesozoic Effect introduces a whole class of ships that follow this rule, known as battlecruisers. Like their historical counterparts, they mount the firepower of a dreadnought on the frame of a cruiser, but stuffing in such a huge spinal gun leaves almost no room for armor. Mass production of these ships is apparently one of the things the Treaty of Farixen was designed to prevent. The Pangea Alliance's frigates also fall into this category, as they forgo armor for superior engines and racks upon racks of fusion missiles.
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
- The Flash Sentry Chronicles: Toxic the bay pony is a very dangerous enemy due to being a Poisonous Person and able to damage anyone he touches with poison. But, when Flash fights through the pain of his poison long enough to hold him in place he is taken down with just one hit via a point-blank blast from Flash's gear.
- Glass Marionette is practically named for this; Kankuro crafts multiple puppets out of stained glass, including one meant for battle, Ajisai. Ajisai is built around the concept of breaking apart and weaponizing the resulting shards, and while her body is built with the idea of easy reconstruction in mind, Kankuro fully recgonizes that she's likely to be completely destroyed/require heavy replacement.
- A key issue with Ash's battle style in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines; Pokémon such as Squirtle can hit hard, but their unevolved state limits the amount of punishment they can take in return.
- Pokemon: Shadow of Time;
- As in Reset Bloodlines, most of Ash's Pokemon are examples of this, relying on raw power and speed to avoid taking hits that they wouldn't be able to cope with. A particular example is Krabby; although relatively experienced, it lost a battle to Spheal in the Cerulean Gym for the simple reason that it wasn't heavy enough to take a hit from its bulkier opponent.
- This also appears to be a good description of Hunter J's ship, with J explicitly musing that the Defiance-class ships such as hers "were meant to hit hard and get the Hell out, not hang in a firefight for the long haul".
- Devastator in The Measure of a Titan is practically the paragon of this. His powers are theoretically capable of splitting a planet in half, and he can use them to fight multiple high-level metahumans at once, but he is as fragile as any normal human, and heals as slowly also.
- The comic Chronicles treats Action Masters as this, particularly the main one Banzai-Tron. The process of becoming one shuts down their transformation ability, but it also vastly increases their strength, speed, and agility by infusing them with far greater vitality — and as Banzai-Tron was already a master of martial arts, he's able to take down a half-dozen Autobots by himself in seconds, including killing the famously doughty Ironhide. However, that increased vitality also means they feel double the level of pain, meaning that Prime is able to stun him simply by using the tires in his chest to give him a severe case of road rash, before ripping off his arm.
