Barrier Warrior

Invisible forcefield, obvious awesome.


Dark Cure Mint: The difference between me and you is that your powers only protect you!
(later, when Dark Mint is killed)

Cure Mint: The difference between me and you is that I was protected.
—Yes! Precure 5 The Movie, re: Mint's first-season powers, which were limited to shields.

The Barrier Warrior is a character with the Magic and Powers necessary to create Deflector Shields or Beehive Barriers to protect themselves and sometimes others. The Barrier Warrior fights enemies with an emphasis not on destruction, but on protecting, and their personalities reflects this by being kind and caring, with Actual Pacifist tendencies and sometimes Healing Hands to go with their defensive abilities. It should come as no surprise that characters with this ability as their main or only power are, you guessed it, heroes. Usually, they're The Chick, a Squishy Wizard or The Smart Guy. In video games they specialize in protecting and aiding team mates, or "buffing", rather than damaging enemies.

Despite these good intentions and potent abilities, they'll pretty much suck at actually doing stuff like beating enemies or worse, protecting their allies! The problem is that their transferable Nigh Invulnerability and ease in resisting attacks that Could Have Been Messy makes them the perfect target for The Worf Effect. As soon as a new bad guy shows up, their shields will pose all the resistance of wet tissue paper to their weakest Energy Blasts.

Less commonly, it can occur that Heart Is an Awesome Power, and the Barrier Warrior will be a fierce fighter on an equal footing with other more aggressively powered cast members. This is done either by cleverly using his shield to trick or outmaneuver enemies, help teammates, or by using it in conjunction with other fighting skills and abilities to actually beat up enemies. A barrier could also be sent forward to attack enemies—if it can stop bullets, it's going to hurt if it runs into your face. The more deadly form of this would be to crush someone with the impenetrable shield. But who ever heard of a villain with barrier powers? If you can control the shape of the barrier, you could hypothetically give it sharp edges as well.

As a power, generating Deflector Shields is much like Flight. In theory it's an awesome power that anyone would like, but like Flight it has become a dime a dozen and pretty lame. Most shows give every character this ability as a secondary power/skillset from a character's main abilities (such as a geokinetic blocking attacks with boulders, or a cryokinetic making ice walls). It's made even more useless since it's easy to deflect Ki Attacks with other Ki Attacks, and techniques like Deadly Dodging are around to avoid most attacks.

On the flip side, writers who notice this have used Re-Power to make these characters incredibly versatile and lethal as well, since it functions like an Imagination-Based Superpower, which often involves Spontaneous Weapon Creation.

Frequently their barriers manifest depending on their morality (and may even change appearance if they change sides). It's either as beautiful (and deadly) Petal Power or gently glowing spheres, or black barriers that crackle ominously.

Not to be confused with Barrier Maiden, though the two can overlap if the Maiden's method of containment is via forcefield.

Compare Stone Wall or Magic Knight.

Examples of Barrier Warrior include:

Anime

  • Komachi/Cure Mint in Yes! Precure 5. In theory, somewhat limited in usage compared to other forcefielders, since she can only produce Mint Protection and Mint Shield around herself rather than just anywhere. In practice, they're strong enough to make Mint the team Worf, can provide pathways for her teammates' powers, and have no apparent limit on range, and the Mint Shield in particular does damage on contact and has been used as a massive Kamehame Hadoken. In season two, though, she loses these abilities, which are replaced with the more traditional attack Emerald Saucer... which turns out to also work as a shield, making her still a Barrier Warrior in spirit if not in practice.
    • Cures Sunshine (and her mascot Potpourri) and Moonlight in Heartcatch Pretty Cure can also cast rather big shields. Sunshine in particular used her Sunflower Aegis to attack back when she made her first appearance.
  • Mai from My-HiME can use her Element to create short-range forcefields for herself and her friends. Natsuki also gets this ability in the manga version (hers is ice in counterpart to Mai's fire).
    • Though considering Mai's power mainly consists of pyrokinesis and summoning a giant dragon with its very own Wave Motion Gun, her shield does not really make her a Barrier Warrior.
    • Sister Yukariko would be a better fit to the trope. She is also an example of The Archer.
  • The main characters of Kekkaishi. Comes with the handy bonus that they can make the barriers implode, destroying whatever they made it surround.
    • They also use some particularly brilliant extensions of standard barrier skills, like a barrier that eats away at anything and everything except the user. And it's implied there are far more powerful barrier techniques out there...
      • Or they can use their barriers for more mundane but still very useful combat purposes. For example, if an enemy is too fast to be captured by a full-sized barrier, simply make a smaller, faster one around a piece of their body or even their vitals (imploding that section is then an option; the main characters figure that out even when they're still rookiees). If that's not an option, a skilled kekkaishi can instead generate long, narrow barriers that skewer enemies like spears.
        • It's worth pointing out that Kekkaishi translated literally means 'barrier master'... making this example the prime epitome of the trope.
  • Bleach: Orihime Inoue. Her powers manifest as six fairies which combine in different ways to produce shields that have different powers. Three fairies combine to create an extremely powerful Deflector Shield. Two combine to create a healing shield that's so powerful it can even resurrect the dead. One lone fairy specialises in a shield that splits two substances apart and can therefore be used to attack and kill. This shield is extremely weak because its linked to the strength of her killing intent. As a Technical Pacifist, Orihime has very little killing intent. If she ever gains it,watch out. She can also combine four fairies to create an Attack Reflector.
    • Also, Hachigen "Hachi" Ushoda from the Vizards. As a shinigami, he was a kidou specialist. As a Vizard, he remains the group's Magic Knight and Barrier Warrior. He's so good and specialised at this that he can even use his barriers and shields to decapitate his enemies. With the aid of a captain (Soifon), he was the only Vizard to beat an Espada.
  • In Neon Genesis Evangelion, each Eva and major villain fight through the use of "absolute terror" fields, powerful forcefields that can deflect bullets and even antimatter bombs, and can only be reliably disabled through a stronger "absolute terror" field or through ridiculously big guns. Rather than being pacifistic team players, though, the Eva are frighteningly violent, and the strength of the absolute terror field comes from the desire for isolation.
  • In Fafner in the Azure, the Mark Funf has the Aegis equipment, which works like this. Surprisingly, Mamoru and Hiroto in The Movie, since Mamoru is dead by then is one of the more Hot-Blooded members, and fights using techniques inspired by the Gobain manga he reads (he even wears a mask that looks like it in battle).
  • In the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha series, barrier powers are a dime-a-dozen, but some mages are demonstrably better at them than others.
  • In Konjiki no Gash Bell, Tio specializes in protective and healing spells (and has only a single weak offensive spell until volume 20, anyway). In a competition where (the monsters' human partners notwithstanding) most battles are 1-on-1, this presents obvious problems.
    • There's also Danny, an early character whose only shown ability is to heal himself. Despite this, he comes awfully close to being a Badass Normal, taking out guys with guns without even using a spell. Eventually, he does get shot, but it only takes a first-level spell to get him up again, hinting that had he survived, he'd be nigh invincible. However, he gets his book burned not in battle, but in protecting a museum artifact. Fans speculate that had this not happened, Danny may have made it to the end, although this is somewhat balanced by having his book reader be a little old man. In the manga, when Gash's book first glows gold giving him the ability to use other demon's spells, it is Danny that saves him with his one and only spell, completely healing the thrashing that Gash received at the hands of Clear Note.
  • Suzumiya Haruhi: Yuki Nagato tends to fight by slamming people with forcefields, although this may be due to the fact that both times we see her fight, she's also protecting noncombatants. This is in contrast to her Evil Counterpart Ryouko, who prefers various means of stabbing the hell out of people (spears thrown with telekinesis, regular ol' knives, whatever.)
  • The Distortion Fields on Martian Successor Nadesico are also useful for offense (and like most Aestivalis weaponry, are an Homage to Neon Genesis Evangelion, above, albeit not as creepy). The most generally powerful attack the Humongous Mecha pilots use involves angling their Distortion Field to a point and ramming the enemy with it, a technique named "Gekigan Flare" as a reference to Nadesico's Show Within a Show. When Aestivalis appear in Super Robot Wars, the Gekigan Flare (or combination attacks involving it) is usually the Aestivalis's Limit Break. Gekiganger fanboys Akito and Gai usually have the Double Gekigan Flare as a Combination Attack. Given that Gai usually survives much longer in a Super Robot Wars game than he did in his own series, you have a surprising amount of opportunities to use it. (It never did get used by Akito and Gai in the series, because they hadn't seen the Short Anime Movie that introduced it yet.)
  • The LambdaDriver-equipped Arm Slaves in Full Metal Panic! are another example of mecha using force fields offensively, although they verge on variable-shape Energy Weapons.
  • The SDF-1 was given a barrier early on: the only problem is that they didn't have the energy reserves to power it up enough to cover more than a tiny circle of the ship. The solution was to create a series of 'pinpoint barriers' controlled by trackballs handled by the Bridge Bunnies (not the principal Bridge team, but other three girls specially trained for this purpose). The Number Two then came up with the Daedalus Maneuver, which involved putting all the shields around the Daedalus (which was originally a sea-going carrier acting as both a fist and a docking bay) so it could punch through the enemy's hull, then open up and unload a large quantity of missiles inside the enemy's guts.
    • Later models of the fighter craft mecha also were given Pinpoint Barriers, and could execute a powerful punch in much the same manner.
      • Likewise, later models of the Macross-class warships. The original Daedalus Attack was thus renamed to Macross Attack.
    • Halfway through the original series, the SDF Macross engineers found a way to produce an omnidirectional barrier that could spread outwards, like a sphere, to cover the entire ship. Unfortunately, the feedback from enemy attacks caused it to overload and explode violently, destroying a sizable chunk of Ontario and resulting in the Macross being forbidden from entering Earth's atmosphere again. By the Final Battle, however, it had been perfected into a fully-functional shield.
  • Nozomi Daichi from The Daichis: Earth Defense Family uses an umbrella that generates force fields.
  • Although they don't do it often, high-level warriors in Dragon Ball Z can generate shields with their ki to deflect or nullify enemy attacks.
  • Mage-type characters in CLAMP works are typically capable of this. Most notable:
  • The Shinkirou, Lelouch's Mid-Season Upgrade in Code Geass R2, is a strange case. It uses the Absolute Protection Territory, a battleship-class Beehive Barrier whose individual mini-shields can be coordinated by the pilot (but this requires an exceptionally quick-minded pilot, meaning Lelouch is the only one capable of using it properly). Defending is its primary purpose, but not allies; since Lelouch insists upon leading from the battlefield but is a mediore-to-poor pilot, it was made to be super tough so he doesn't get One Hit KO'd.
    • There is also a single instance of Lelouch finding a non-defensive use for the shield, near the end of the series: Holding open a hole in Damocles' own shield so that Suzaku and some Mooks can get inside and lead a direct attack.
  • Megumi Kurogane of Gate Keepers is of the versatile variety, creating giant walls to block enemy attacks, as well as using said walls to crush them. This power is inverted into a piercing ability after her Face Heel Turn.
  • Ayeka from Tenchi Muyo! can generate force fields, and also can summon floating wooden blocks that encircle a person and restrain them. Ayeka uses her shields as an offensive weapon by flying towards the enemy. When properly motivated, her shields are large and powerful enough to shatter an entire corridor of one of the most powerful warships every built.
    • Her Evil Counterpart Expy, Romio, uses this in Magical Project S.
    • Katsuhito - Tenchi's grandfather, has similar shields, but he only uses them for defense, preferring the Tenchi-ken for offense.
    • Tenchi has similar powers, but due to his lack of training he rarely uses them. The only time we see him use them in the original series was wrapped around a fist to attempt a killer blow against Kagato while parrying his sword. However, Tenchi's ultimate power - the Light Hawk Wings - are massive shields that can block nearly anything. After unleashing them he fights with the Light Hawk Sword, which is really just one of the shields shaped like a sword.
      • All of the Royal families Tree Ships also have the Light Hawk Wings. Ayeka's has three, but the Grand Ship Tsunami (who is also their goddess) can form a full 10 wings which is powerful enough to stop an Earthshattering Kaboom. Tenchi's wings differ from those of the tree ships, though, in that his can perform "material conversion", which is a fancy way of saying they can do anything. Among other things, Tenchi's Light Hawk Wings have been used to escape from inside the event horizon of a black hole...by sheer brute force, destroying the black hole in the process. Everything in that sentence should be physically impossible, even by the super-technology standards of Tenchi Muyo, which demonstrates just how special his wings are in-universe.
  • The UC Gundam series has the "I-Field", a barrier that deflects beam weapons. It requires a considerable amount of power to put up (and, earlier on, the generator itself is rather big), such that only large Mobile Armors are capable of using them to any useful degree. They're a defensive measure only until Zeta Gundam, when the Psycho Gundam Mk. II uses 'reflector bits' to generate a localized I-Field some distance away, with which it can deflect its own beam shots so they come at an unexpected angle.
    • However, despite this being an obviously useful tactic, about the only other Mobile Suit designed with this in mind is the Ex-S Gundam, and it's an overpowered Super Prototype that already has an indirectly firing weapon in addition to its 'reflector INCO Ms'.
    • Later on, the Crossbone Gundam X3 is built with I-Field generators in its arms, and they're powerful enough to force the Divinidad's weaponry against itself at very close range - much like trying to shoot a blocked gun.
      • By this point decades of technological improvement have made it possible for a normal-sized mobile suit, rather than a giant like the Psycho & Ex-S Gundams, to operate an I-Field, but the power requirements are still a major limited factor. Especially since "normal sized" has become smaller by this time, with mobile suit design de-emphasizing armor in favor of speed, agility and presenting a smaller target profile. The I-Field generators also produce a lot of heat, requiring 2 minutes of cooldown for 1.75 minutes of operation, otherwise the generators will overheat to the point of destroying themselves.
  • In Mahou Sensei Negima, the previous generation group Ala Rubra had Filius Zect, who acted as the group's Barrier Warrior. The current group Ala Alba has Asuna, who has the ability to cancel magic and a BFS that serves as a powerful shield.
    • Haruna also sometimes uses her Art Initiates Life artifact to create shields.
    • Also, most mages have a personal shield active all the time. By chapter 141, Asuna has learned to attack in teams: She blows the shield away right before Negi or Kuu Fei hits.
  • Raquel Casull's barrier spells demonstrate that sometimes the best offense is a good defense. Though she does employ standard offensive magic as well, both for attacking and cooking.
  • Acao from Jinki Extend can crush metal with her fields.
  • In D Gray Man, Miranda Lotto is the only Exorcist with a purely defensive Innocence. However, it's really, really powerful; she can basically reverse and suspend time within an area around her. In practice, this means that within that area, anyone she wants will have wounds disappear as soon as they're made, and she can reverse damage to objects just as easily. The two big limitations are that it only lasts as long as she has the strength to keep it in place and that every bit of damage reappears as soon as she stops invoking.
  • Let's not forget Beet the Vandel Buster's Cruss, a water using legendary hero whose shield protects the group as well as rebounding any attack back onto the attacker. Slightly subverted in the fact that said shield can transform into a giant flail.
  • Heroman: Joey's gauntlet allows him to throw up small but apparently very strong force fields.
  • In Umineko no Naku Koro ni, Shannon has displayed the ability to generate powerful magic barriers. She fits the Barrier Warrior stereotype, being fairly meek... most of the time.
  • Kyle from Psyren can create dense pockets of air with his psy. Not only does he defend with them, but he uses the blocks to crush foes as well as a platforms for maneuvers. His future version vastly improves on the defensive capabilities of them and can block all but the strongest attacks from all directions.
  • While all of the Witches from Strike Witches can use magical barriers (though Eila prefers to rely on her dodging abilities), Yoshika has so far the biggest and most powerful barrier amongst them. She's also The Medic and, strangely, the main character.
  • One of the powers of Ryujin's sword allows Yaiba to create an energy shield. Emerald is capable of summoning Barriers and healing people. Actually, she Is the Barrier Soldier.
  • Taomon from Digimon Tamers. She has other attacks, but they see very little use compared to the forcefield. Her ultimate form, Sakuyamon, is similar, though goes on the offense a little more (her barrier is sometimes the only means of getting into the Cosmic Horror's territory without dying horribly.)
  • Jake Martinez from Tiger and Bunny can create barries and use them offensively, which is how they are used most of time.
  • Kyoko in Puella Magi Madoka Magica can create walls made of interwoven chains. Even though she subverts the personality type, this ability fits her closed-off nature, as well as the fact that, deep down, she wants to protect someone.
  • In the second season of A Certain Scientific Railgun, Mikoto goes up against a bomber, who knew she was going up against an "electromaster" and thus used ceramic-cased bombs. She is dismayed to discover the hard way that Mikoto's "electromaster" powers include a barrier that deflects ceramic shrapnel.

Comic Books

  • Susan Storm aka The Invisible Woman in the Fantastic Four, who was given force fields because mere invisibility isn't all that super when your kid brother Johnny can lob fireballs.
    • As a veteran superhero, she's gotten quite good at using her powers offensively.
    • This editor remembers her threatening to use them to create a brain embolism/aneurysm at one point.
    • The Invisible Woman has easily taken out the other members of her team with force fields, as well as knocking out both The Hulk and She Hulk by cutting off their air. This was mocked in an issue of Exiles, implying she brags about the feat often.
    • Dr. Doom has stated, on a number of occasions, that Sue is easily the most powerful member of the team. This is backed up by a few of higher end feats, which include killing a Celestial, who are essentially space-roaming gods. She is, to date, the only Earth-based Marvel hero to accomplish this. And in fact, very few characters of any level of power have ever accomplished such a feat; even another Celestial would have great difficulty killing a Celestial.
    • Suffice to say, while her personality is still the mothering/nurturing type, and the original stories featured her as a sometimes-invisible Damsel in Distress, Sue has gone a long way towards subverting this trope when it comes to how her powers are used.
  • Melissa Joan Gold aka Songbird from the Thunderbolts creates pink solid-sound energy constructs quite similar to Sue Storm.
    • The resemblance was noted by Sue Storm's son Franklin Richards:

Franklin: H-Huh? A bubble like mom's bubbles! Except -- I can see it!

  • Subverted with Captain America (comics), whose sole weapon - his iconic indestructible shield - is, when thrown, a great offensive weapon against most people.
    • During a period when his shield was lost or destroyed (around the fifth or sixth time... it happens to him a lot), Cap was given an energy shield which acted in this way. Being a traditionalist, he quickly went back to the old shield once it was found/rebuilt.
  • Brainiac 5 of the Legion of Super-Heroes, who uses his force field and martial arts training to make up for no powers in the comics. In the cartoon, he's a Do-Anything Robot and a Telescoping Robot, whose Beehive Barrier is the least of what he can do.
  • Booster Gold, late of the Justice League of America, is a huge subversion. He's a pompous dimwit with super strength and a one-track mind, and he rarely even thinks of using his force field in critical situations.
    • He's been using it more recently and in more creative ways, such as wiring up his forcefield with his blasters to blast the area in a burst so he wouldn't get mindcontroled. One of the reasons he didn't use it so often was because it might weaken his immune system.
  • In The DCU, Argent and the various Green Lanterns tend to fight like this, especially Hal Jordan and the Justice League Unlimited John Stewart. While their powers are effective Imagination Based Superpowers, respectively, Plot Induced Stupidity tends to leave them as walking walls of light.
  • Samaritan of Astro City manipulates an "Empyrean field", which is strong enough to repulse a tidal wave.
  • Zhantee in Elf Quest gains the power to shield his friends from danger after being exposed to the power of the Palace of the High Ones.
  • In his very first appearance, Magneto created a forcefield around an entire military base to keep the X-Men away. Occasionally, writers still remember that he can do that.
    • The X-Men villain Unus the Untouchable is a villainous example of a Barrier Warrior, with the mutant power of being able to project an impenetrable force field around himself. Rather than being kind and caring, Unus acts like a Jerkass because he thinks his power prevents anyone from being able to stop him. He's generally right...until the superhero he's fighting finds some way to either circumvent the field's protection or comes up with a creative way of shutting it off, at which point he's easy prey. Turns into Blessed with Suck when he loses control of his field and suffocates to death when it grows so strong it repels air.
  • Subverted in Buffy Season 8. Giles fights a sorcerer with much greater proficiency in magic than him and is mocked for casting a basic barrier spell that any competent mage could tear through. Giles however, casts the barrier inside his opponents head and as it expands, his skull explodes from the pressure. Brutal killing with a simple defensive spell.
  • Rampart in Sovereign Seven had this as his power.


Film

  • Since Invisible Woman has this, so does Shrinking Violet Violet Parr (though a more limited version). She uses it for trapping mooks, cutting off electrical circuits, and as a super-hamster ball (which can combine with Dash's Super Speed to transport the whole family in record time).
  • The Matrix: A good few scenes with Neo have him using this power.


Literature

  • Bella in Breaking Dawn is able to protect herself and her allies from the mental powers of enemy vampires.
  • Kharl in Saga of Recluce uses Order Barriers as his main ability often using them to not just protect himself but to suffocate enemies while deflecting firebolts at armies of soldiers.
  • In Harry Potter, Harry, in the final stage of the Battle of Hogwarts casts only shield charms, due to him playing dead until his dramatic reveal.
  • Harry Dresden qualifies. Over the course of The Dresden Files series, he's used various bracelets to create both convex and flat shields. Up until his hand got burned to a waxy crisp (the shield blocked the physical effects of fire but not the heat it produced) it primarily shielded against objects and other kinetic energy. He made sure the next version of the focus corrected that little flaw.
  • Derek Huntsman of the web-novel Domina has the power to create barriers. Quite fitting for someone with Chronic Hero Syndrome, though a little odd for someone in the position of The Hero.
  • Dune The Atreides family specializes in shield-based combat, which is a detriment on Arrakis.


Roleplaying Games

  • Dungeons & Dragons unsurprisingly provides a few examples:
    • The abjurer in 2nd and 3rd edition is a specialist wizard who focuses on defensive magic, including spells that create magical force effects, such as mage armor and shield. A 3E Prestige Class, the abjurant champion from Complete Mage, combined the abjurer's protective magic with a warrior's skill at arms to make a literal Barrier Warrior who relies on magical force barriers rather than physical armor.
    • Another 3rd edition Prestige Class, the Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil, lets a wizard surround himself in multiple layers of different-coloured barriers, each of which blocks a different form of attack and has different effects on anyone who tries to pass through it. At higher levels they can shape the barriers into walls and bubbles.
    • With the right combination of feats it is possible to make a fairly effective fighter who wields dual shields.
    • Both the swordmage and the wizard classes from 4th edition have shielding capabilities. The shielding swordmage effectively absorbs one enemy's dealt damage every turn. The staff wizard, on the other hand, can use shielding type spells to boost his defenses in order to make attacks straight up miss him.


Video Games

  • While his personality is a total blank, Ness from EarthBound has the power set and is arguably an example who is also The Hero. Due to his party's ability setup, Ness is a case where this actually helps him shake off enemy attacks instead of receiving The Worf Effect.
    • Actually, Poo can also use a similar shield setup to Ness as well, and in fact a BETTER version which allows him to shield all his allies at once, whereas Ness's shields can only be added to one ally per turn.
    • And Paula is furthermore the best example in Earthbound itself, as her personality seems to be similar to a barrier warrior even though she's also a mix of a Glass Cannon and Squishy Wizard. Also, Ness and Poo's shields affect physical damage, and only at best cut it in half (while sometimes deflecting the other half). Paula's shields, are meant to shield from PSI attacks, and they FULLY shield affected characters instead of just reducing damage, and they can also deflect PSI completely. Using PSI Shield Omega in the Starman DX battle plus the Starman DX using PSI Starstorm Alpha = scrapped Starman DX.
    • Still more, Lucas possesses half-damage reduction forms of both the Physical and PSI shields [both blocking and deflective] in Mother 3 and a lot of his use in combat relies on him using these shields in the later half of the game.
  • In City of Heroes the Defender archetype uses this type of powers, and shares weaker versions of them with the Controller; additionally villains get their own versions in Corruptors and Masterminds. Four of the power sets available work primarily by putting shields of some kind on other characters (or in the case of the Mastermind, a bunch of henchmen!), including Force Fields, Ice Shields, Sonic Barriers and Thermal Radiation Shields. The other Buff/Debuff sets vary widely but several include auxiliary barrier powers. All of these various powers are so potent that a team composed heavily of support characters can truly be Nigh Invulnerable.
  • Anarchy Online has this in the Soldier profession, who can not only create Deflector Shields around themselves, but also around others. However, the profession is focused around dealing ranged damage to an enemy.
  • Dr. Akihiko Sakata, I presume?
  • Guarlions (and similar machines) in Super Robot Wars Original Generation can generate a forcefield when moving at high speeds. Naturally, one of their strongest attacks is to ram things hard. Similarly, the Super Robot Giganscudo will also use its fields to slam into the enemy, either when using its massive weight as a weapon, or by grabbing the enemy from a distance and slamming it into its field-shrouded mass.
  • In the MMORPG Flyff, an entire class, the Assist, as well as its higher-level counterpart the Ringmaster, is dedicated to buffing and healing.
    • Well, really, that makes them The Medic, as while many skills increase HP or provide an increased Dodge or Block rate, only 2 skills of the Ringmaster, Protect and HolyGaurd, and 2 of the Seraph's skills, Raiment of Rhisis and Soul of Rhisis, actually boost defense.
  • World of Warcraft has several classes capable of becoming Barrier Warriors. Priests can make protective barriers out of an allies' soul, with some priests actually enabling these shields to reflect damage. Paladins go one step further into the defensive variety, able to make themselves invulnerable to damage, make an ally invulnerable to physical (but not magical) damage, or sacrifice themselves to make an ally immune to absolutely everything but removing them from combat. Finally, Warriors can turn their shields into fully offensive weapons.
    • More recently Priests specializing in the Discipline tree have become a full embodiment of this trope. Discipline Priests specialize in creating shields to prevent damage rather than to heal it.
    • Warriors also have an ability called "Shield Wall" which temporarily reduces all damage they receive by half. The animation looks like military shields dancing around their bodies. Similarly, a Paladin's "Divine Protection" spell halves all damage the paladin receives for several seconds; the reason a paladin would choose Divine Protection over their more powerful total-invulnerability spell is that the latter convinces monsters to attack their comrades instead.
    • Mages are probably the ones with the most buffs that act as shields, most of which also can be used outright offensively just by being there and getting hit by enemies. They have molten armor, which on top of lowering the attacker's crit chance on the mage actually does fire damage to the attacker. They have frost armor, which raises their armor value and, depending on how far down you go into the frost specialization of their magic, will slow any melee attacker to varying degrees and outright chance-on-hit freeze them in their tracks. THEN they have the literal stop-all-incoming-damage shields, Mana Shield (which eats through lots of mana and kinda sucks) and Ice Barrier which on top of being a very effective defense will also explode and freeze all enemies in range of the mage when it takes its max damage. Oh, and they have two "wards" that absorb any incoming fire or frost damage and, if glyphed, can actually convert part of said absorbed spell into their own mana.
  • Warhammer Online has several healer classes with barrier or damage reduction abilities, most notably the Chaos Zealot (and its stunty equivalent the Runepriest) - they have barriers to shield their entire party, single targets, or prevent damage to themselves; they can buff to reduce incoming magic damage; they have tactics to increase the armor of allied players or put up a barrier on themselves; finally, they have two separate morale abilities to absorb damage across the party.
  • The Golem Asgard from the Wild ARMs series specializes in barriers, and is supposedly the defensive, friendly golem. However, since its barriers disintegrate anything that touches them, they're primarily used offensively, sometimes leading to One-Hit Kill attacks in games where you fight Asgard. Barrier Fist! Barrier Storm!
  • Speaking of Golems, the Summoned Monster Golem from Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, and Final Fantasy Tactics will stop any incoming physical attack with its huge rock (or metal, in VI) hands for a little while after being summoned. Similarly, Shadow's dog Interceptor will randomly shield him from damage, only to come back and savage the enemy in return. And in Final Fantasy IX, the primary duty of the great Eidolon Alexander is protect the castle, and city of Alexandria, with its gigantic angel wings.
    • In nearly all of his incarnations, the Carbuncle summon is the magical counterpart to Golem, projecting a reflect shield over your party to deflect most magic spells.
    • The Shield Dragon from Final Fantasy V is an enemy with a permanent reflect spell. It attacks by casting spells on itself, because in this game a spell can be reflected only once.
      • At various times in several games of the series, it's beneficial for the player to utilize the Reflect spell in non-traditional ways. For example, you're very unlikely to win the battle against Asura in Final Fantasy IV unless you cast Reflect on her, since unless you're at an absurdly high level she'll heal faster than you can inflict damage, and also has very strong physical attacks of her own.
      • And against the Shield Dragon itself, if you want to hit it with magic, you'll have to duplicate its own strategy and bounce spells off your own Reflect-shielded party members.
  • Several rings in zOMG! are shield based, but the closest thing to an outright barrier warrior is the Chef (yes, chef) Ring Set. In addition to receiving a natural armor bonus, the Chef also has access to Teflon Spray (one of the most useful Armor Buffs in the game), Pot Lid (which can deflect ranged attacks with ease), and Meat (which can nearly double your maximum health). Due to the energy based nature of all zOMG! skills, it could be said that the Chef set is actually summoning G'hi Shields to protect his/herself and his/her allies. Or, you could pretend that he/she is really spraying Teflon all over themselves. It's that kind of game.
    • Unfortunately, a recent update that rebalanced the rings and ring sets removes some of this: the Chef set trades Teflon Spray for Hack (an attack ring), and its bonus is now to Dodge rather than Armor. However, apparently it is now considered the new "best" set to have. Plus Dodge controls whether you're hit in the first place, so that can be even better than the best defense.
  • Kirby has three different Barrier Warrior powers that he can absorb. The Stone power allows him to change into an invincible rock that can fall onto people, the Mirror power can spray harmful crystals that reflect enemies' attacks back on them, and the Parasol power shields against Death From Above and has a hefty swat.
  • Some Pokémon moves work as barriers, such as Protect and Detect, which prevent all damage, but usually tend to fail when used two turns in a row. However, against the Pokemon Slaking, which is extremely powerful but can only attack every other turn, such a Pokemon is Nigh Invulnerable. There's also Reflect and Light Screen, which temporarily halve the damage dealt by physical and special moves, respectively. However, there are certain moves that can break through these barriers. The move Feint will hit a Pokemon that is using Protect or Detect (but won't hit a foe that isn't), and Brick Break and Defog will get rid of Reflect and Light Screen. Defog also gets rid of Safeguard (protects against status conditions) and Mist (protects against stat lowering).
  • Wood Man, Skull Man, Star Man, Plant Man, Junk Man, Jewel Man, Pump Man, and Enker from the Mega Man series. Jewel Man's is the best. The Mirror Buster, as Mega Man uses it, is actually better than Enker's version, as it has a 180 degree angle of reflection and doesn't damage Mega Man when it's used.
    • Mega Man X also includes Armor Armadillo's abilities, which let X fire rolling barriers along the ground as projectiles. The special charged version creates a barrier over X that blocks attacks and can do damage to enemies when touched.
  • In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind the demigod Vivec's main job is maintaining magical barriers that hold back the blight. He doesn't particularly like his job, but has no choice particularly since he was one of the ones responsible for creating the problem in the first place cares a lot for his people and feels responsibility towards those believing in him.
  • In Mass Effect, all combat armor uses "kinetic barriers" known colloquially as "shields" to intercept bullets. Most characters get the Shield Boost ability, which rapidly recharges shields in combat. Tech based characters get omni-tools and the Electronics talent, which add to shields (especially Electronics). But the biotic characters get the Barrier talent, which generates temporary shields from their own bodies. Maxed out, Barrier grants nearly twice the shielding as any other character and lasts nearly as long as it takes to cast it again. However, the three biotic classes can also get an ability Barrier Specilization, which dramatically lengthens the ability's duration and shields, while providing constant regeneration. The end result is that a Squishy Wizard style character can take as much dakka as the game cares to throw at him, with only a handful of attacks posing any kind of threat even at the highest difficulty levels.
    • In Mass Effect 2, the Sentinel class has access to the 'tech armor' ability, which projects a form of holographic armor over your character's normal combat armor, providing a tremendous boost to your shields. Unless your (buffed) shields are depleted, it will never go down. When it does go down, an explosion is triggered, which is great for gaining some breathing room when surrounded by melee enemies. As you put more skill points into it, it becomes far stronger, eventually to the point where it doubles your shields. The thing that makes it really gamebreaking is that when you do cast it, it restores your shields up to their buffed maximum, even from entirely depleted shields. Even better, it can usually be cast again as soon as your shields go down, providing you with virtually limitless shield power (only if you're willing to mostly forego the Sentinel's other tech and biotic abilities, which also trigger global cooldown). Essentially, if used right, it makes you invincible. Fun stuff.
    • Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 also gives us the vanguard, with the biotic charge ability. Essentially, when Shepard uses this ability, he turns himself into a miniature mass relay (those big things that hurl the Normandy across the galaxy) and slams into his enemies at incredibly high speed, using his biotic barrier to damage and throw his target.
  • Stacking Arcane Shield, Fade Shroud, and Rock Armor onto a mage in Dragon Age makes them tougher than any warrior in the game. Yes, the Squishy Wizard just out-tanked the tank.
    • To say nothing of the absolute Game Breaker that is Shimmering Shield, which, at the cost of a significant mana drain, makes the mage essentially Made of Iron, with extra armor, 75% resist all magical damage, and 75 physical and mental resistance.
  • In Halo: Reach, a barrier armor ability is available called Armor Lock that protects the user from all harm at the cost of being unable to move when in use. It also bursts outwards in an EMP when it drops. Note; All harm means just that. Unlike the Beehive Barrier from Halo 3, Reach's shield ability can stop a speeding warthog like... Well, Superman, really. Going from a sitting duck to the man of steel in a split second really makes your day, as the jeep that was about to crush you explodes and goes tumbling away.
  • Cole from In Famous eventually gains an impenetrable shield ability, and can even get an upgrade that lets him absorb energy from deflected attacks.
  • A skilled Exdeath player in Dissidia Final Fantasy will suffer many attacks and actually be hit by none of them, on account of his excessive amount of guard, reflect and counterattack skills.[1] He has six different blocks in total, five magical ones in addition to his default physical block. A player match between Exdeaths is... silly.
  • In Second Sight, just about every single psychic in the game has the ability to create force fields, from the bulletproof NSE shock troops to the Zener Children- who are all but invincible on top of being some of the most powerful psychics in the game. Depressingly enough, the main character doesn't get this ability.
  • A force field that lasts a few minutes is a powerup in Backyard Football.
  • Fairess, one-third of the Sylph summon from Tales of Symphonia uses a shield as her primary weapon.
  • Use of the Riot Shield in the Call of Duty Modern Warfare games, though care must be taken to avoid getting shot in the legs or back.
  • In the Touhou series, all of the characters have barrier shields in the fighting games, although some are made of physical materials such as ice, most of them are just magic energy.
    • Reimu Hakurei is a subversion. First, her barriers are extremely offensive in nature. Second, she's the main character.
  • In The Lost Vikings you control three viking warriors, one with the power to jump, and to smash through things with his head. One with a sword and a bow. And one with a shield to protect himself and the others from enemy attacks.
  • In Tales of Vesperia, Estelle embodies this trope. While she is essentially the designated healer, she can conjure a force field spell to render allies immune to damage, as well as fights with a sword and shield, having the highest defense of all characters.
  • The Advent's Iconus Guardian from Sins of a Solar Empire is this trope in starship form.
  • StarCraft 2 is a curious example, since it doesn't involve a character but a unit - the Protoss Sentry, whose Force Field ability can be devastating in the hands of a skilled player, especially when used to cut off enemy units passing through a chokepoint.
  • Guild Wars' Monk has a substantial number of shielding powers, ranging from damage limiters (some of which reduce the max damage any one can take; others lower the damage each consecutive attack deals) to blocking powers (giving the subject an increased chance to block attacks completely) to converting all incoming damage to healing. The Ritualist has a few abilities with similar, but less effective, effects.
  • Priests in Dragon Force (video game) use a spell called Holy Shield that is this trope
  • Aqua in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep has some useful Barrier powers. Her default guard is a magic barrier, her counter attack after blocking is to shatter the barrier, and she has the ability to rush enemies with a barrier up.
    • In Kingdom Hearts II Sora's most powerful spell is the Reflect line of spells, which, after successfully guarding, unleashes a spray of Light equal to the enemy's attack power.
      • There is also a wizard nobody that falls into Demonic Spider territory due to the use of indestructable transparent blocks that it uses for both offense and defense.
    • 358/2 Days gives us the Barrier Master Heartless, whose sole reason for existing is protecting its allies and itself from damage until it is defeated.
  • Unusually for a Bullet Hell shmup, Hellsinker heavily uses a suppression shield as a gameplay mechanic. The shield, which looks like a blue circle surrounding the player's craft, can damage enemies and slow bullets down. Some attacks are almost impossible to avoid without it, but other times using it will land you in a world of hurt.
    • Fossilmaiden also has an extra shield attached to the hilt of her Laser Blade.
  • Mori Motonari of Sengoku Basara combines this with Trap Master. One of his abilities includes creating light barriers that bounce people off of them. If done correctly, he can make trap enemies between two barriers, bouncing them off each other and killing bosses incredibly quick.
  • One of Alex's abilities in Prototype where he can summon a shield out of biomass that can deflect bullets. With the right aim you can kill an entire army with their own bullets. Or you can simply run threw them as if you were a snow plow.
  • Elh from Solatorobo, though the barrier spell is extremely draining and only used as a last-ditch resort (and only in cutscenes; you aren't given the option of asking for a little help during a fight).


Web Comics

  • Young Anja Donlan of Gunnerkrigg Court had the ability to create spherical purple shields. Later, she combines this power with an etheric computer (designed by her and her husband, Donald), expanding its usefulness: using it, Donald gains the ability to create shields, and Anja is able to bind demons.
  • Laura of Collar 6 was recently revealed to be this.
  • In Drowtales potentially all fae, depending on their skill and strength in mana. Seen in the last panel here.
  • Wayward Sons: Ipalyo. He can shape his barriers into secure platforms to carry allies around, and they withstood an explosion which caused tremors beyond visible range.
  • Guardian Angel of PS238 is one, with her power being a semi-aware forcefield that protects her from all harm. This turns out to be Blessed with Suck when it turns out that she's had it since birth, and has protected her from everything including illnesses and the minor injuries induced when receiving medical injections, meaning that she has no immune system to speak of. This causes big problems for her when her powers get turned off.
  • In Zodiac, Virgo is able to protect herself like this. However, it isn't invincible, and doesn't completly protect her from heat.


Web Original

  • Forcinor of Super Stories does force fields. He doesn't even have the traditional invisibility. But he can use them to reinforce doors and walk away.
  • Tumble Bee of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe is a Flying Brick whose "super-strength" and "invulnerability" are both based on generating force fields.
    • Deflector is a more traditional Barrier Warrior, using planes of force as both defense and weaponry. The Great Wall, one of China's greatest heroes, shares the power set.
    • The heroic Dove is a Martial Pacifist who specializes in evasion, blocking, and misdirection in combat. He's an expert at somehow finding convenient trees, walls, cars, and so on to duck behind just as the bad guys attack. He only goes "offensive" when he absolutely has to.
  • Wallflower of the Whateley Universe: spherical shields, invisibility, and the psychic ability to 'see' when inside her 'invisibility' sphere.


Western Animation

  • Prior to the Time Skip, Gwen of Ben 10 had luck powers and various Elemental Powers over water and wind that often didn't work very well. Post Time Skip, Gwen stops using all of those and instead just creates forcefields for shields and bludgeoning.
  • In The Spectacular Spider-Man, Shocker's costume generates Deflector Shields as a secondary power, allowing him to survive a building's collapse.
  • Arguably, Ratchet from Transformers Animated. His main ability comes from his wrist-mounted magnetic field generators, which he often uses to create shields against enemy attacks. They're a bit more malleable than the average Deflector Shields, though, and they can can just as easily toss enemies around or push objects into them.
    • In the original Transformers, Trailbreaker also had force field powers.
  • Toa Tahu wears the Mask of Shielding, which protects him against attack by creating a bubble shield (which is covered in Instant Runes in the Flash animations but not in the movies) capable of protecting him from a waterfall of lava. When he becomes a Toa Nuva, the mask gains the ability to protect others as well. However, it does not protect against attacks that the wearer is unaware of, and sometimes you can get around it by doing something that would not be interpreted as an attack—for example, Nuhvok-Kal managed to reach through the shield with the power of his gravity weapon and cause Tahu to faceplant, bringing the shield down.
    • Tahu's also a subversion as far as personality is concerned, as he's as Hot-Blooded as they come and not prone to running and hiding behind cover (though he's mellowed a bit in that regard).
  • Eric the Cavalier from the animated Dungeons and Dragons is issued a shield that projects an invulnerable force field. He doesn't use it very often, though, because his usual reaction to danger is to run away and hide.
  • Maguro of Sushi Pack can use her psychic powers to create a force field that's large enough to shield the whole group, and strong enough to keep anyone under it from being crushed, even by beings much, much larger than she is.
  • In Wakfu, sufficiently powerful magic users generate shields at a whim. Both the villain Nox and the benevolent dragon Grougaloragran project force shields to protect themselves from each other. There's also the whole class of Fecas whose gimmick is having cool shields.
  • In Challenge of the Go Bots, Leader-1 had this ability. However, it took a lot of energy and was exhausting for him, so he could only maintain a forcefield for a couple of minutes at a time.
  • In Rollbots, Lance's only power is being able to create force-fields around himself, which he uses in more or less every fight he is in. It's ironic, because he has demonstrated on at least one occasion some fighting prowess.
  • Shining Armor in My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic.
  1. ↑ he has several rather slow and telegraphed attacks, but, upon blocking an opponent's attack with one of his shielding abilities, he can activate nearly any of them, both HP and BRV, at lightning speed, even if he doesn't have them in his current moveset, or even learned them yet
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