Glass Cannon/Literature

Examples of Glass Cannons in Literature include:

• In The Dresden Files Harry mentions that wizards are like this; for all of the magical weight they can throw around, they still need all of their squishy internals to work. Harry reasons that instead of being on the defensive, he should punish the other wizard in their back-alley duel. When dropping a car on the guy doesn't work, Harry realizes that he's boxing way out of his weight class. The guy in question is the current most likely candidate to being on the Black Council.
• In 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 At one end of the extreme are outdated Solarian Navy ships which put more focus on offensive weapons than counter missiles and point defence lasers. Likewise, Maya's Arsenal ships which are capable of carrying thousands of long range missiles, but are just converted freighters and have no defence 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.
• Not surprisingly, the Lensmen universe 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.
• In the Bolo books, there are Enemy units that 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.
• Coinshots in Mistborn 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.

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