Cast from Stamina

Stamina is usually used for physical activities. However, in some settings, it also fuels spells.

If there are other systems of magic in the setting, casting from Stamina usually has these characteristics:

1. You get lower total power than in a Mana Meter; either spells have a lower power level, or they run out quickly.
2. Stamina regenerates much quicker than Mana; compared to a normal mage, a Stamina-based caster can cast many more spells per day, and with proper resource management, they can outlast one in battle.
3. Exhausting your spell power will also leave you physically exhausted and unable to run.

Often overlaps with Cast from Calories; expect this kind of mage to be a Big Eater. As a consequence of Stamina being a vital spellcasting stat rather than a Dump Stat, Magic users in this paradigm tend to be much buffer than your average Squishy Wizard.

Compare and contrast with Cast from Hit Points, which wounds the character, may be lethal if done to excess, and is usually associated with Blood Magic and The Dark Arts — but which is generally more powerful than casting from stamina or mana, due to the higher risk involved. Many works include both, though, Cast from Hit Points being the Dangerous Forbidden Technique version. Stamina Burn would be the trope if an opponent can also damage this resource.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Ball: Ki attacks explicitly work this way, with characters frequently commenting (especially early on) on how using a ki attack will leave them exhausted or noting how other characters don't even seem winded after a particular ki attack. Cast from Calories is also invoked, with Goku in particular noting that extensive ki expenditure leaves him hungry (but then, so does extensive fighting of any sort — he is a ludicrously Big Eater, after all). This becomes less obvious as the series goes on, since the characters become literally godlike in the amount of ki they have available at any one time.

Fan Works

• Dekiru: The Fusion Hero!: Izuku's Quirk, "Fusion", is mostly dependent on his stamina. Material Fusion takes less stamina, but Izuku is limited to how long he can keep them merged with his body. Human Fusion is much more taxing but he can stay merged with a person for far longer, provided he doesn't use any majorly draining moves like One For All. Multi-person fusions are by worse. While the fusions are more powerful, they eat away at Izuku's stamina at a rapid pace, to the point that he risks potentially fatal exhaustion if he tries to stay fused with his partners for too long or uses more than one multi-person fusion in a short amount of time.
• Shall We Make a Deal?: Both Izuku and Ibara have Quirks that drain their stamina to use. Izuku can empower or depower others in exchange for a reward, but the greater the boost, the more it exhausts him. Meanwhile, Ibara's vines can heal others but drains her stamina to fuel said healing.
• In Risk It All, Ren's powers seem to be taken from his own energy reserves. Using Flash Step and Soul-Crushing Strike in rapid succession over the course of a 40-second firefight leaves him winded and gasping for air despite not taking any hits.
• The Palaververse: Magic in general costs physical energy to use, a.k.a stamina.

Literature

• In The Belgariad sorcery is exhausting. Beldin teleports a bunch of loose rocks from a riverbed into a pile to use as building material for a tower and it's all he can do to walk the next day.
• The Diadem Saga uses this: the protagonists often drain every ounce of magic in spells by the end of each book's climax, but only require a day or two to recover to be back to full strength.
• Inheritance Cycle: Magic users expend as much energy when performing a task by magic as they would doing the same task by conventional means (condensed, of course, into the amount of time it takes to use the magic).
• The Kingkiller Chronicle: The magic of Sympathy is based on Equivalent Exchange and a reliable Sympathetic Magic connection to the power source and target. Desperate or careless sympathists often use their own body heat as a fuel source, which leeches away their energy and can cause shock, hypothermia, or death in severe cases.
• Uprooted: Magic is tiring to use. At the beginning, casting one minor cantrip (from what she and her instructor later learn is an incompatible school of magic) leaves Agnieszka too drained to walk, but she develops huge reserves of strength and learns to cast more efficiently as she trains. When she tries to cast when completely exhausted, she has a Power-Strain Blackout and is later warned that she could have killed herself.
• In The Wheel of Time, channeling the One Power in large amounts or for long periods of time is as draining as intense or prolonged exercise. Channelers providing backup in a protracted battle work in shifts so they can rest, while some push through and drain themselves to the point that they can barely stand. Channeling past the point of exhaustion is particularly dangerous because it can cause a Heroic RRoD and sometimes a permanent De-power.

Live-Action TV

• Stranger Things: El's powers come at the expense of fatigue.

Roleplay

• Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues:
  • Irene's power of biomanipulation can exhaust her if she uses it extensively in one sitting.
  • Sebastian can expend his stamina in order to increase the range and power of his shadow manipulation. His ride-along Fesxis can physically manifest herself by drawing upon Sebastian's energy, but since it takes a heavy toll on him, she only does so while he's unconscious.

Tabletop Games

• In Ars Magica, it can fatigue a mage to try casting a spell that's beyond their skill to use safely or to improvise all but the weakest magical effects. This can be shaken off within minutes or hours, but Ritual Magic invariably takes bed rest to recover from and can roll over into Cast from Hit Points if the mage isn't strong enough.
• Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game: Most techniques cost at least one fatigue. Advanced techniques have an additional fatigue cost when first learned, but lose the additional cost after sufficient practice.
• Dungeons & Dragons. In early editions of Advanced D&D, casting some spells costs points of Constitution. For example, casting the Identify spell lowered Constitution by eight points. The DM could require a character to make a Constitution check, and failing the check meant the character would become fatigued and have to rest.
• GURPS. Fatigue is measured by loss of Strength points. If Strength reaches zero, the character falls unconscious. When a mage casts magic spells, each spell cast drains a certain amount of either Health or Strength (Fatigue). The more spells you cast, the weaker you get. One of the first spells an apprentice will usually learn is "Aid", which allows him (among other applications) to transfer his Strength to someone else. This allows his master to cast spells that would otherwise cost too much for him to cast and is one of the major reasons wizards take apprentices.
• Hero System: Casting spells or using other powers normally uses up points of Endurance. They come back rapidly with rest, though.
• Pathfinder has the Mechanically Unusual Kineticist class which, rather than the usual mental stat, channels using constitution as their casting stat. Unusually for this trope, the Kineticist's magic is actually portrayed as Unskilled, but Strong compared to a typical Vancian mage: taking The All-Solving Hammer approach to casting, kineticists are mostly restricted to usable-all-day variations on elemental blasts, Full-Contact Magic, and a smattering of utility Elemental Powers. They can also, however, briefly supercharge their powers at the cost of taking Burn^note a form of non-lethal damage that can only be healed with a long rest, representing the toll of channeling energy beyond what they can safely handle. The end result is that an overzealous kineticist can easily dish out buckets of damage dice every turn while redrawing local maps...right up until they pass out from exhaustion and have to be dragged around by the rest of the party for the remainder of the adventuring day.
• In Shadowrun, mages have to roll to resist Drain when casting spells. If the spell's Force is lower than their Magic attribute they take stun damage, or fatigue, on a failed resist. Spells with greater Force are another story.

Video Games

• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura had separate meters for Hit Points and Fatigue. The latter would run down when running, fighting, heavily encumbered, or casting spells, justifying the Robe and Wizard Hat since robes were among the lightest non-technological apparel in the game.
• Betrayal at Krondor mixes this with a Cast From Hitpoints mechanic. All characters have a certain amount of Health and stamina, with stamina being lost before health. Stamina acts as a free hitpoint reserve, however, skills and abilities degrade as health is lost. Mages use health & stamina to cast spells, switching to Cast From Hitpoints, which lowers their own abilities, when they run out of stamina to cast.
• Betrayal in Antara, being the Spiritual Successor of Betrayal at Krondor, has a similar system of stamina and health points, with mages casting from stamina until they are forced to switch to Cast From Hitpoints. However, the game goes a step further by making in-battle healing via resting or magic healing only restore stamina, not health.
• Dark Souls: Using magic costs stamina, in addition to using limited casts/FP, from Dark Souls II onward. This carries over into Bloodborne (with no FP or limit on the number of uses) and Elden Ring (costing FP as well)
• In Dragontorc on the ZX Spectrum, the magic system is Vancian; but some spells, such as bane, continue running until deliberately stopped. While they're running the player's stamina is gradually drained.
• Evil Islands: Curse of the Lost Soul combined the Sprint Meter with the Mana Meter: it was depleted by either spellcasting or running, and it only replenished when the character was motionless.
• Final Fantasy XIV had Tactical Points that were used by physical DPS and tank classes. Unlike Magic Points, TP had a fixed maximum value and recharge rate. As of version 5.0 and the launch of Shadowbringers, however, TP was removed from the game.
• Magical Battle Arena has a Sprint Meter that doubles as a Mana Meter for your normal ranged attack. When Fate switches to her Sonic Form, not only does her speed increase but her Sprint Meter's rate of consumption while dashing drastically decreases as well.
• Ryzom: The Saga of Ryzom allows you to customize your spells in a way that allows this, which gives you more points to do things like shorten your recast time.
• Silent Hill 3, in an unusual Survival Horror example of this trope, has two unlockable joke weapons that use Heather's stamina meter as ammo.
• Vindictus has the stamina meter going down when you sprint, pick up heavy stuff, use magic as Evie, block attacks as Fiona, or use smash attacks.
• ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal: Inverted. Fairies use mana to cast spells and stamina to fly. However, there are some passive spells that allow you to fly at the cost of mana if your stamina runs out.

Webcomics

• Blood is Mine: Using any kind of magic is very tiring. When Jane and her team need to cast several useful but draining rituals in a row, they rotate who casts them.

Web Original

• In the fictional MMORPG Insania Online, every class can choose between Mana, Rage, and Energy at character creation (Energy being a Stamina analogue, in that it's a small resource pool that refills quickly), leading to some odd possibilities like Rage-based healers or Mana-based warriors.

Western Animation

• My Little Pony 'n Friends: The villain Erebus' powers cost him strength and stamina to use, and the only means he has of recharging is to steal more shadows. Thus, while he's very powerful, prolonged battles aren't his strong suit, something the heroes exploit by forcing him to fight the quick and agile flutter ponies until he's too tired to put up much of a fight anymore.

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