History Main / MultipleLifeBars

* Dreadnoughts in ''VideoGame/DeepRockGalactic'' have an extra life bar in addition to their normal one, representing the hardened shell over their thorax. Once this bar is depleted, the shell breaks off, leaving the vulnerable flesh underneath exposed. Put enough rounds in that, and the Dreadnought finally dies.

* The Zoltan Shield in ''VideoGame/FTLFasterThanLight'' functions much like one of these. It blocks all incoming attacks and prevents your ship from hacking, boarding and mind controlling. The standard shield cannot block missiles but slowly recharges.

* In the ''Franchise/{{Gundam}} Battle Assault'' games, instead of duels utilizing a best-two-out-of-three format, each fighter had three life meters. When one is depleted, the mech is "overheated" and flinches for a moment, but the fight otherwise continues without interruption.

* ''VideoGame/{{Iji}}'' has both "Armor" and "HP" stats, for the PlayerCharacter ''and'' enemies. Small arms fire only damages armor, with each HP equating one full armor bar. However, powerful attacks (melee attacks, explosives) directly damage HP, bypassing the armor entirely. Other bosses also have such high HP that the stat is displayed with multiple layered bars. The FinalBoss has up to ''eight'' life bars.

* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' features Temporary Hitpoints known as "overheal", bestowed by the Medic's Medigun and certain LifeDrain weapons. Overheal slowly depletes over time (how fast it depletes depends on your maximum HP; full overheal will always be gone after 20 seconds).

* ''VideoGame/TheWonderful101'', in the same vein as Bayonetta, can also have bosses with multiple life bars. Most bosses have somewhere around five to ''ten'' layers of health. If you see a boss that has a purple life bar, then get ready for a really long battle. [[spoiler: The final boss's health bar has ''eleven'' layers.]]

* In ''VideoGame/RapidReload'' for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation, Area Bosses have several overlapping life bars, going from blue to green (which is the color of the player's only life bar) to yellow and finally to red. There is also a digital counter, which helps show the damage you're dealing on tougher bosses whose blue bars won't start going down until they're more than halfway to destruction.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'''s Substitute ability does this; the user pays 25% of their max [[HitPoints health]] to hide behind a plush Pokémon-esque doll (likely in a ShoutOut to ''VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}'', that had inventory-carried teddy bears that served a similar purpose) that has the exact same HP as the user lost, and absorbs any attack barring [[SuperScream sound-based moves]] or the [[ArmorPiercingAttack Infiltrator]] ability - and while it seems like a UselessUsefulSpell, and often is in the [[PlayTheGameSkipTheStory main story]]; it has a plethora of secondary effects, including status immunity, and can also assist with stalling tactics or even be Baton Passed onto another team member to protect them on switch-in.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'''s Substitute ability does this; the user pays 25% of their max [[HitPoints health]] to hide behind a plush Pokémon-esque doll (likely in a ShoutOut to ''VideoGame/{{Earthbound}}'', that had inventory-carried teddy bears that served a similar purpose) that has the exact same HP as the user lost, and absorbs any attack barring [[MakeMeWannaShout sound-based moves]] or the [[ArmorPiercingAttack Infiltrator]] ability - and while it seems like a UselessUsefulSpell, and often is in the [[PlayTheGameSkipTheStory main story]]; it has a plethora of secondary effects, including status immunity, and can also assist with stalling tactics or even be Baton Passed onto another team member to protect them on switch-in.

* ''VideoGame/{{Metroid}}'' games have Samus with multiple energy tanks. ''VideoGame/SuperMetroid'' also adds the Reserve Tank system, a secondary health storage method that could be triggered manually or when Samus runs out of energy in her main tanks.

* Monsters in ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'' have anywhere from 2-4 bars of health, the reserves represented by red crystal icons next to their HP. They also have Latent Abilities that [[TurnsRed activate as you take away bars]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Iji}}'' has both "Armor" and "HP" stats, for the PlayerCharacter ''and'' enemies. Small arms fire only damages armor, with each HP equating one full armor bar. However, powerful attacks (melee attacks, explosives) directly damage HP, bypassing the armor entirely.
** Some bosses have such high HP that the stat is displayed with multiple layered bars. The FinalBoss has up to ''eight'' life bars.

* ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' bosses use layered health bars (which are only visible with the Scan ability). In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI'', there is a single bar that cycles through colors for each additional bar's worth of health (green > yellow > orange > pink > purple, with green being the "base"). Some bosses (such as [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Sephi]][[BonusBoss roth]]) had health ''beyond'' the maximum the bar could display, causing them to appear to be taking no damage from any attacks until they were brought in range. Every game since then has stuck with a green bar and squares underneath, showing how many they had in all. In ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'', however, the colors are mixed up (green > blue > yellow > red, with green being the "base"). From ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'' onward, the colored bar system was ditched in favor of a HP gauge counter, with one full HP bar representing 200 HP.

* Most bosses of the ''VideoGame/{{Yakuza}}'' series have at least 2 or 3, while tougher bosses can have up to 6. Subverted in 6, where all bosses have a single large health bar.
** The Final Boss of ''Yakuza 5'' has '''9'''. [[BonusBoss Jo Amon]] in most games have even more than that, and life bar colors start getting weird when you have that many.

** Two superbosses in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'', the Hell Wyrm and Yiazmat specifically, each had a variant of the game's normal boss health bar. What makes theirs different is the fact that they have '''50''' health bars apiece. Not too bad with the Hell Wyrm, which had only 8,930,711 HP. This sounds like a lot, and it is, but the game's battle system means you can hit hard and rapidly if you've got your Gambits set up right. That's ''nothing'' compared to what Yiazmat has. You really wanna know, huh? Well... 50,112,254 HP. There's a reason why Yiazmat is the page image for MarathonBoss. Strangely, the other superboss of the game, Omega Mark XII, does NOT have a health bar like this, considering how it has 10,370,699 HP in the Japanese version (even there it doesn't have it!) Possibly justified for the western releases, [[{{Nerfing}} which took 9,000,000 health off its original counterpart]].

* ''VideoGame/KaijuWars'': The titular kaiju typically begin most missions with two-to-three health bars, and can gain more as they heal themselves. Fully depleting one of a kaiju's health bars will reduce its movement speed by one, making it more difficult for the kaiju to reach whatever building it's currently trying to destroy. In [[GiantFly Pterus Ignis]]'s case, bringing the creature down to its last health bar will also ground it, leaving it vulnerable to the player's non-anti-air units.

* The ''TabletopGame/{{Fate}}'' system effectively combines all three, especially in its post-''TabletopGame/SpiritOfTheCentury'' incarnations such as ''TableTopGame/TheDresdenFiles''. Characters have both at least one stress track (and usually multiples, such as e.g. physical, mental, and social) and a small number of "consequence" slots that can be filled in with additional negative aspects of increasing severity. Stress, regardless of type, is temporary and clears out after each conflict assuming the character has a suitable chance to catch his or her breath; consequences on the other hand can last quite a while and in the worst case even be permanent, but help "soak up" more damage than the stress track alone could handle. Any successful attack that the character cannot or for some reason will not absorb with a combination of stress and consequences will take him or her out of the conflict; what precisely that means depends on the context (most people won't spontaneously die after losing a heated public debate, for example), but ''is'' by and large up to the winning side and probably not good.

* ''VideoGame/{{Brigador}}'' has three different layers of health: Hull, which can't be restored in any way, Shields, which is restored between missions and via Shield pickups, and Overshield, which is gained from excess Shield from pickups and slowly degenerates over time.

* Players in ''VideoGame/SCPSecretLaboratory'' have a regular health bar and one of two secondary health bars, depending :

** SCPs get Hume Shields, which fully absorb damage taken and regenerate after not taking damage for long enough.