glass cannon

plural glass cannons

1. especially roleplaying games; board games; especially roleplaying games; board gamesvideo gamesA character or unit with strong offensive power but weak defensive capabilities.

   Deep elves die easier than most other races - glass cannons to an extreme extent.

   2009 May 23, Eugene Barrett, “Re: DCSS:: need advice”, in rec.games.roguelike.misc (Usenet)

   2 more examples

   A min-maxer might create a "glass cannon" character—one with lots of awesome offenses but next to no defense.

   2012, Lizzie Stark, Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role-Playing Games, Chicago Review Press, →ISBN, page 238

   Now, both sides had built up their fleet quite extensively with very fast, kind of glass cannon-type destroyers and cruisers in the run-up to the war, buuut the French fleet, at the beginning of World War II, was very definitely - below capital ships, was very definitely a fleet of glass cannons, whereas the Italians, although they had their own share of them, had a number of pretty good designs, like the Zara-class heavy cruisers, so, in destroyers and cruisers, I think the Italians definitely have a qualitative advantage, at least for a good portion of their ships[…]

   2018 December 9, Drachinifel, 21:35 from the start, in The Drydock - Episode 019, archived from the original on 10 Sep 2022