Basic Trope: A character that looks small and weak is actually a Mighty Glacier.
- Straight: Alice is a small, skinny girl carrying around a hammer fit for an ogre. She can use it just as effectively as any of the muscle-bound characters in the cast.
- Exaggerated: Alice looks absolutely emaciated, yet she can move around in extremely heavy armor while wielding two BFSes as if she was wearing nothing at all.
- Downplayed:
- Alice is a small, skinny girl who can cast powerful spells capable of duplicating a more muscular character's feats of strength, but she has to stay at one spot to cast them.
- Alice is Armored But Frail.
- Justified:
- Alice is granted a superhuman strength by magical forces... at the cost of her graceful agility.
- Alice is superhumanly dense, giving her far more muscles then she has any right to have, but also making her extremely heavy.
- Alice is a Cyborg made of extremely resistant but heavy metal.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome. Alice is strong enough to carry a hammer due to working out but didn’t think of working out her legs and ends up making herself strong and dense but slow.
- Inverted:
- Acrofatic
- Super Strong bodybuilder Biggs looks like he would be bulky and slow-moving... but really has Super-Speed and isn't as strong as he looks.
- Bob is quite bulky and muscular compared to the rest of the cast, but he's a wizard with the stat spread of a Glass Cannon.
- Subverted:
- Rumor has it that Alice has extreme physical strength, but Alice is first actually seen in combat, her main advantage is Super-Speed.
- Alice is introduced as a "little girl" with a big weapon. Turns out she's actually a Token Heroic Orc who's seven feet tall and muscular. She's only "little" by the standards of her species.
- Double Subverted: Alice was trying out a different fighting style. Her usual fighting style involves slowly swinging a huge battle axe.
- Parodied: She is faced against her opposite self (read: inverted).
- Zig Zagged:
- Alice is a mode-shifting Jack with a Tank mode among other things.
- Alice may be around the 4-5 feet mark, but the reason why she can even carry that hammer is that she's built like Mike Tyson.
- Averted: Alice is no stronger than any other girl of her build.
- Enforced:
- "We need someone small and adorable in this game, but the 'tiny spellcaster' angle is overplayed. Let's make her the slow-moving bruiser for a change!"
- "So we have these Standard Fantasy Races and need a Mighty Glacier for the player party, but dwarves are overused and orcs are enemy-exclusive. Perhaps a Cute Bruiser hobbit instead?"
- The character creator is very flexible, allowing for anything from tiny waifs to imposing giants. Appearance has little or no gameplay effect, and the former can be easily combined with a slow and brutish tank class.
- Lampshaded: "You think you're strong? Alice can throw a linebacker across the field with her bare hands"
- Invoked: Bob, a skinny Squishy Wizard fed up with constantly being targeted first, gives his robes enchantments that trade mobility for increased physical durability.
- Exploited: Naturally, Alice's foes assume a small girl can't use a weapon that large until she proves them wrong by launching an attack that catches them off guard.
- Defied: "*Sigh*. Don't even try to lift that hammer Alice, its head is larger than your body. Now do something useful and take this spellbook."
- Discussed: "Wow! How does Alice even lift that hammer!"
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Alice's intense workout and diet regimens to let her carry such a huge hammer while still staying small are shown.
- Alice attempts to do the work of a Mighty Glacier, but collapses in fatigue from the amount of strain it puts on her frail body.
Back to Glacier Waif.
