Fragile Speedster

Basic Information

The Fragile Speedster is a characters as device trope of someone who is super-fast, but vulnerable if and when you do manage to hit or immobilize them. As a combat role it's basically the hyper-velocity version of the Glass Cannon. They are a One-Hit-Point-Wonder, possibly mixed with The DPSer. They are decidedly not an Evasion Tank, or at least not good at tanking for long.

Tropes and Attacks:

• Confusion Fu
• Death by a Thousand Cuts
• Hit-and-Run Tactics
• Lightning Bruiser
• Shed Armor Gain Speed
• Spam Attack
• SpeedBlitz

Sources

Bibliography

1. TV Tropes Wiki

Game and Story Use

• More common in games where you can min-max for speed, initiative, and rate-of-fire. In a point-build system, you can probably twink out to your hearts content and organically end up on this archetype.
  • In class systems or games with fewer "adjustable nobs" during character creation, you're less likely to end up with this character concept (at least outside of the superhero genre) and more likely to end up with a straight DPSer or Evasion Tank.
    • In some RPGs (I'm looking at you, Truth & Justice and the first edition of 7th Sea) the ability to purchase multiple actions per turn is ridiculously under-costed, making the speedster the best character build of the game, and rarely fragile unless you really work at handicapping yourself.
• The fragile speedster is a great build for NPCs. They fly out of the gate and hit pretty hard, which makes the PCs take notice and creates some delicious tension once the dice hit the table. But when a PC gets lucky and lands a critical hit, it's all over. This keeps the fight short, and never gives anyone time to get bored.