Glass Cannon / Literature

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• 1632: Invoked. When the USE attacks Denmark with ironclad warships more advanced than anything else at the time, Prince Ulrik counters by building a fleet of longboats armed with spar torpedoes. Being little more than large rowboats, they're easily gunned down by the USE navy, but they can be built sufficient numbers to swarm the larger battleships, and, if they get close enough, it only takes one good torpedo hit to disable an ironclad.
• Bolo: Some Enemy units are just counter-grav platforms mounting Hellbores. They can be easily swatted by said supertanks, but can be a problem if allowed to attack. They aren't One-Hit Kill-capable, but the numbers are always on their side.
• The Dresden Files: Harry mentions that wizards are like this; for all of the magical firepower they can throw around, they are still mortal humans and still need all of their squishy internals to work. They can mitigate this somewhat with defensive enchantments like projected shields and bulletproof clothing, but these are still subject to limits. Harry also frequently notes that most supernatural creatures are Made of Iron compared to humans.
• Fallocaust: Jade is one of, if not the, most powerful character in a series full of them. However, he lacks the pure muscle of some of his brothers, and several characters manage to incapacitate him by virtue of getting a lucky hit in.
• Helen and Troy's Epic Road Quest: Ranger Grainger claims that dragons were specifically designed by the gods to be used as fodder for quests, hence why it's so easy for them to die in an improbable number of ways (striking at a specific spot next to their heart, tripping over something, spontaneously exploding from anger, etc). Combined with their low birth-rates, dragons are considered a protected species in the United States due to their declining population and there are dragon preserves that have a no weapons policy because of it.
  Ranger Grainger: ...if you put a wandering idiot up against a dragon in a fair fight, well, the dragon will win most of the time. But all it takes is that one time, that on stumble, that one desperate stab with an enchanted dagger, that impossible moment of triumph, and the dragon ends up dead.
• Honor Harrington: There are several ships like this. At one end of the extreme are outdated Solarian Navy ships which put more focus on offensive weapons than counter missiles and point defense lasers. Likewise, Maya's Arsenal ships which are capable of carrying thousands of long range missiles, but are just converted freighters and have no defense at all.
  • Special mention to HMS Wayfarer and her sisters: converted freighters, sluggish and armored for crap, but carrying super-dreadnought-class main guns capable of carving up a battlecruiser like a roast turkey, a complement of light-attack craft capable of laying down significant hurt in their own right, and, oh yeah, the first roll-out of the Manitcoran Missile Massacre.
  • Honor's first cruiser, the HMS Fearless was refitted with weapons that would allow it to kill far bigger ships. But the weapons' ridiculously short range and the lack of any decent defenses resulted in a single resounding success during the first fleet exercise, and getting 'destroyed' in every exercise thereafter once the opponents had realized the threat and decided to give some payback for the first success. Fortunately for them it worked again against an actual enemy who thought the defenses of the Fearless were spent and closed to point blank range to eliminate them.
  • The Manticoran LACs introduced in Echoes of Honor are armed with battlecruiser grade grasers, but they're not very survivable should an opponent decide to focus on them. In universe, LACs in general are described as "eggshells armed with hammers".
• The Hunger Games: Despite being quick-thinking, agile, and a good shot with a bow and arrow, years of being underfed really limits how much stress Katniss's body can take.
• Lensman plays with this one, but the vulnerable sluggers are always accompanied by copious numbers of their exact opposite — ships that are all shield and nothing else (sometimes not even a human crew). There are, however, usually large numbers of balanced ships in the same fleet.
• Mistborn: Coinshots are a kind of Misting who have only one power: the ability to telekinetically shoot metal away from their bodies. This makes them able to dish out a ton of damage, since a Coinshot with a pouch of money is basically a human machine gun, but they have no greater ability to resist damage than anyone else. Have a half-dozen Coinshots protected by about the same number of Thugs (Mistings who can increase their strength, speed, and durability to superhuman levels) though, and you've got yourself a small but very effective army.
• Night Prince: A human ordinarily couldn't hope to defeat even the youngest vampire, yet, with her electric whip, Leila once killed a group of five. Before that, she took out a group of three. This is purely an offensive power, however; she's as fragile as any other human.
• An Outcast in Another World: Malika is an exceptionally strong spellcaster for her age, but she hasn’t bothered boosting her HP or Stamina very much.
• The Reckoners Trilogy: Deathpoint can kill almost anyone just by pointing at them but lacks a "prime invincibility", meaning that he can be killed just as easily as anybody else.
• Second Apocalypse: Anasurimbor Inrilatas is half Dunyain by birth, inheriting his Lightning Bruiser father's strength, speed and intellect. However, when he attacks a fellow Dunyain descendant, Maithanet, he gets his face crushed in, causing Maithanet to sneer that he had "his mother's bones."
• Worm:
  • Besides enhanced timing and perception, Flechette/Foil has no defensive abilities. She has, however, demonstrated the ability to cancel the Siberian projection, which no other cape in history has managed to do. She was also able to kill a cloned Grey Boy which had only been done previously by one of the most powerful characters in the story. It's later revealed her power literally cannot be defended against, even by other superpowers.
  • Shatterbird's power is to control glass. She can cause serious citywide devastation by using her powers to shatter all the glass in her range, but her powers give her no defensive buffs aside from using glass as makeshift armor, unlike most of he other Slaughterhouse 9 members, who generally survive joining by having something up their sleeves to protect them when pissed-off heroes inevitably land hits.

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