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Power Harness - TV Tropes

️Wed Feb 28 2024

Armor plating has tradeoffs — it's expensive, slows you down and makes you a bigger target — so when it can't actually block common enemy weapons, it's just dead weight. Military ships such as dreadnoughts have proven to be more survivable with so-called "all or nothing" armor designs, which heavily protect the vital areas but leave the remainder of the ship near-unprotected (at the cost of being hobbled even by vessels with weak guns).

A Power Harness is this principle applied to Powered Armor — keeping a basic shell with mounted weapons, thrusters, servos, etc., but dropping the actual "Armor" part.

Most suits fall between two extremes of design: the Infantry-style harness is a single unit that mostly follows the shape of the user's body, while the Cavalry-style harness is worn as multiple protruding components which give it a non-human silhouette.

By nature, the user tends to be a Fragile Speedster/Glass Cannon unless the suit compensates with Deflector Shields of some kind.

Often, especially if flight-capable, this equipment is designed for fighting a particular type of enemy against whom conventional weapon and/or armor designs are ineffective; in many cases, it explicitly needs to be worn by some Super-Soldier, Ridiculously Human Robot or otherwise-gifted person who has the Required Secondary Powers to operate such a barebone "combat vehicle". That is, faced with a Kaiju who can easily shoot fighter jets out of the sky, any military would love being able to forgo building a complete jet and just strap the engines and armaments directly to a soldier's body... if they could only find a soldier who can pull off high-speed maneuvers in such a rig without simultaneously suffocating and snapping in half.

While not always, these kinds of suits are often depicted on young women, who may wear them over a Latex Spacesuit or Leotard of Power to provide Fanservice and Technology Porn in one package (acting as a loose sci-fi counterpart to the Chainmail Bikini). The relatively slim silhouette also lends itself easily to the suit having disproportionately large weapons or propulsion mechanisms, making its pilot seem smaller by comparison.

A common aesthetic for humanised forms of military vehicles or Humongous Mecha, as it allows them to retain the original design's most recognisable features while still looking mostly human.

Compare Armor Is Useless, Jet Pack, Mecha Expansion Pack and Small Girl, Big Gun. For protective gear which functions like armor but looks like spandex or regular clothing, see Impossibly Cool Clothes. For Powered Armor which protects everywhere except the head, see Helmets Are Hardly Heroic. For outfits that lack the overt mechanical look of this trope but still make the wearer stronger, see Clothes Make the Superman.

Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Lyrical Nanoha: Nanoha's "Fortress" equipment, versions of which appear in both Force and the movie continuity, is a bulky support system which straps over her usual Battle Ballgown, consisting of a flight unit, a number of shields incorporating non-magical weapons like blades or Plasma Cannons, and bracer-mounted mana output ports for a BFG called the Strike Cannon. In both cases it's part of a series of equipment developed to help Midchildia's Military Mages fight opponents who can negate magic; outside of such situations this kind of "mass-based weaponry" is outlawed in favour of Magitek, both for environmental and lethality reasons.
Symphogear: The eponymous combat suits all consist of tight material with exposed skin and a few scattered metallic components like headphones, thrusters and wrist guards (some of which can expand into much bulkier mechanical devices when needed). They exist primarily to generate a field which lets the wearer touch Noise without disintegrating, and secondarily to outfit them with a supply of weapons and various Special Attacks for cutting down Noise more easily. While they're implied to offer at least some protection against conventional attack, exactly how much is unclear, as the majority of Symphogear users were trained by a man who achieved superhuman strength and durability through training alone.
The World Witches franchise is set in an Alternate History where Always Female "Witches" based on famous pilots defend Earth against Alien Invasion. Aside from firearms, their main combat gear is the Striker Units — magic-amplifying armour which covers only the user's legs, styled after a real-life tank or fighter plane (the latter type allowing the wearer to fly).

Comic Books

In the Marvel Comics The Transformers comic, computer wizard Josie Beller is crippled and nearly killed in a Decepticon attack. She then uses her cybernetics expertise to build herself an exo-suit that allows her to move again. This "Circuit Breaker suit" is designed specifically to enable her to fight and destroy Transformers: besides restoring her full range of motion, it can access any computer of any kind, magnetically levitate her as long as she's close to a large mass of iron, and generate electric shocks strong enough to wreck any electronic device. However, it's basically strips of circuitry pasted onto her body; it has no protective ability whatsoever.
The golden age Hawkman of Earth 2 wears boots, a belt and a chest harness made of "nth metal" that allow him to fly. Only the belt is really necessary though. The boots and harness are partially to help him steer and mostly for flair. The silver age Hawkman who came to Earth 1 is a winged alien who doesn't even need the harness for that much, but wears one anyway because you're not Hawkman, really, if you lack a chest harness. Officially it's part of his alien police uniform.
BoBoiBoy Galaxy x Lawak Kampus: SUPERIOR: Froggy calls Tony Stuck (an expy of Tony Stark) to have Froggy's personalised battle armor sent to him. The green robotic pieces that fly to his location only consist of enhancements for his arms (to shoot mega blaster cannons), his legs (to help him fly), and one over his backpack.

Films — Live-Action

Aliens: The P-5000 Powered Work Loader, better known as the "Power Loader", falls somewhere between Power Harness and Mini-Mecha — a 3m (9' 10") tall humanoid forklift whose operator is strapped in front with no protection other than a rollcage over their torso. Its arms (ending in clamps and an optional blowtorch) follow the operator's movements only when gripped by an external control stick, letting them easily free their hands when needed. While not designed for combat, Ripley makes use of its incredible strength to manhandle the Alien Queen in the climax of the movie.
In Avatar: The Way of Water, the RDA have started equipping their troops with "skel suits" — essentially a set of long mechanical limbs that a soldier straps into to make them about as tall, strong, and fast as a Na'vi, though without offering significant protection.
Edge of Tomorrow: The "Jackets" used by the humans fighting the Mimics grant the wielder greatly enhanced strength and come with several heavy-duty weapons (including machine guns, explosives, and shoulder-mounted turrets), but don't come with any armor beyond their frame and sometimes a helmet — either because the things were expensive enough as is or simply because most armor you could fit on them wouldn't be strong enough to stop a Mimic's attacks in the first place. This is one of the many changes from the book All You Need Is Kill, where Jackets fully cover the user's body.
Elysium: Max DaCosta dons a powered exoskeleton to keep himself mobile and fighting fit amid his terminal radiation poisoning, allowing him to rip the heads off androids and pile drive soldiers into metal floors. The movie shows that a medical procedure is necessary to don the thing, as hardware has to be installed in the skull, and the body has to be reinforced where the exoskeleton will be mounted onto it. The movie's villain, Kruger, also uses an exoskeleton, and later upgrades to a more advanced version with more armor plating before he attacks Max in the movie's final battle.
Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Iron Man: During Tony's first flight test, he is wearing the gloves and boots of what will become the Mark II armor, along with a harness over his arc reactor that distributes power to the hand and boot repulsors.
- Iron Man 2: In Whiplash's first appearance he wears a minimal version of the Iron Man tech, largely consisting of an arc reactor strapped to his bare chest along with two energised whips which draw on it for power.
- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: Riri "Ironheart" Williams straps herself into a bulky harness which outfits her with a Jet Pack and Arm Cannon while leaving most of her body visible. Though in this case it's a prototype for a suit of Powered Armor similar to Iron Man's, and is only unarmored because it's not finished. She gets a more sleek suit of Powered Armor later in the film.
The Pumaman: Tony gets most of his powers from a belt given to him by his Aztec mentor Vadinho which comes from the Andes Plauteau.

Literature

A Certain Magical Index: The "Anti-Art Attachment" is a set of thrusters and weapon modules designed for fighting mages, which can assemble into various vehicles or strap themselves directly to the user's body. Misaka Mikoto gains ownership of the gear during the New Testament arc by hacking it with her Electromaster abilities. While Mikoto has used the AAA to achieve high-speed flight, it's explicit that this would not be possible for a normal wearer, and that she can manage only by using her powers to shield herself and filter out extra oxygen from the air.
Hundred: The eponymous Century Armaments are Morph Weapons manifested by Slayers from a Variable Stone, and the only weapons effective in fighting the monstrous Savages. The exact form of a Hundred can vary between a Power Harness, handheld weapons, Attack Drones or some combination of all three, growing more elaborate as the user increases in experience.
Infinite Stratos: The IS units consist of bulky mechanical armor for the forearms and lower legs (making the wearer taller and allowing them to wield massive weapons), along with some kind of wings, Jet Pack or Shoulder Cannons (which float disconnected from their body). Aside from that, users wear only a sleeveless leotard which offers little protection. With the exception of The Protagonist, IS units can only be operated by women, and their overwhelming power has had enough impact on society to rapidly turn Earth into a Matriarchy.
INVADERS of the ROKUJYOUMA!?:
- In book 16 Theia completes the Combat Dress, a piece of equipment which resembles a gown but is described as a "wearable Space Fighter", outfitting her with a Jet Pack and Anti-Gravity hardpoints to which various weapon loadouts can be equipped. It doesn't include any defensive features outside of said optional modules, as Theia's personal forcefield is already sufficient for most purposes. While Theia already had the ability to summon most of these weapons from her ship at any time, their unwieldiness reduced her to little more than a glorified turrent gun; the Combat Dress both lets her wield more weapons at once and increases her mobility so that she can show off more of her actual fighting skills.
- The Power Assistance Field (PAF) takes this to its Logical Extreme — a modified personal forcefield generator small enough to wear clipped to a belt, which projects an invisible skintight field that incorporates the strength-enhancing functions of Powered Armor. While originally designed as a mobility tool for the elderly and infirm, its various models quickly develop a wide market as everything from search-and-rescue equipment, to a wearable forklift, to a spacesuit for the fashion-conscious, to a more portable alternative to conventional military Powered Armor.

Video Games

Call of Duty:
- Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare's speculative gimmick is a 2050s where exo suits have become practical. The devices take the form of a backpack that powers a set of limb braces, which allows soldiers to leap great distances, cling and crawl up flat surfaces, hover and dash about, and punt human-sized targets across a room. The result is a small but significant way to create highly mobile super soldiers.
- Downplayed with Call of Duty: Black Ops III, where similar powered harnesses exist in the background as a "budget" option for troops, since the militaries in this timeline have chosen to focus on full-limb replacement cyberization.
Cosmic Break features a cast of customisable mecha ranging from blocky faceless machines to Ridiculously Human Robots with bulky mecha parts slapped on their limbs.
Densou Tenshi VALFORCE is a Virtual-ON clone featuring Bishoujo characters in this style — ranging from leotard-clad Expies of the Triggerheart Exelica cast, to Hokyou Mei's heavy gear which more resembles an open-cockpit Mini-Mecha or Cool Chair.
Dungeon Crawl has Coglins as one of its playable species. They're mechanically-gifted goblins who augment their small physiques with exoskeletons of their own invention, giving them statures similar to the other medium-sized species. They can even wield two one-handed weapons at once, though they require time to rev up to full power in combat or switch out their weapons. They also can't wear the magical jewellery that every other species can (because it would interfere with their exoskeletons), but they make up for this lack with the ability to invent one of three randomly-generated gizmos to permanently install in their exoskeletons, which provide some benefits common to jewellery as well as some benefits unique to gizmos.
Marvel's Avengers: The Makeshift armour suit, in reference to the Iron Man example above, sees Tony wearing a gauntlet and boots from one of his suits. As it is only cosmetic, it offers as much protection as the normal suits.
In StarCraft II Co-op, Arcturus Mengsk's army consists of citizen-soldiers who can be equipped with work frames (a set of clawlike grippers and a skeletal frame of struts and hydraulics to give them the strength to carry them) for resource harvesting. The whole thing resembles a Hardiman man-amplifier.
Wynn Syphex and Jens Malric of Star Renegades wear power harnesses; Wynn's in particular seems designed to show off her bodysuit as much as let her swing her oversized sword around. In contrast to his sister, Wynn's brother Davion wears more conventional Power Armor (though he still forgoes a helmet).
The Surge has Exo-Suit Rigs, a robotic power assist rig that enhances the user's strength but by default doesn't offer any significant protection. It is possible to upgrade it with additional armor but in most cases this armor only covers the front and sides of the user in critical locations leaving the back and less critical areas unprotected.
Triggerheart Exelica is a Shoot 'em Up series starring female Artificial Humans with combat equipment which makes them resemble the Space Fighters more common of the genre — largely consisting of a Leotard of Power, Jet Pack, and leg armour.
In XCOM 2, the midgame EXO Suit is a powered frame worn over an XCOM soldier's combat armor, and while its does provide additional health and protection (though not as much as the jump from Tier 2 armor to Tier 3 armor), the EXO Suit's main purpose is to support a heavy weapon like a flamethrower, rocket launcher, or mega-shotgun. The endgame WAR Suit is similar, but overlaps with Powered Armor as it offers proper armor plating and the ability to generate a protective force field while also carrying plasma-based versions of the EXO Suit's heavy weapons.

Real Life

Unarmored powered exoskeletons see some use in real life as mobility tools and for lifting heavy objects.
The Hardiman was a 1960s prototype "man-amplifier" that the user strapped on — including blocky mechanical legs fitted to the sides of the wearer, and a pair of Power Fists ending in crab-like claws. It was purported to make a construction worker strong enough to one-hand a bundle of I-beams, but the power requirements were never solved, causing it to be abandoned.