Stamina Burn

Stamina, which we call the Sprint Meter, is a measure of the ability to exert yourself until you can't, which is pretty important. Sometimes even more important than Hit Points and/or Mana. Stamina allows you to perform things such as running, striking enemies or possibly casting spells, if Mana's not a thing. So, getting hit by an attack that drains your stamina can equal trouble for you, especially if you are dealing with large groups of enemies and you cannot react or run away fast enough.

Note that SP, which sometimes means Stamina Points, doesn't always. If it means something like Spell Points instead, then the trope is Mana Burn. Then there's works such as Fighting Fantasy for example, which uses Stamina as its Hit Points, which isn't this, but Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp".

But back to magic. Stamina might be used in place of magical energy to explain how mages and warriors and others are all using the same resource. It could even just be called "Energy" or "Power" too. In those cases, the uses it's put to determine if it's Stamina or not. Although, having everyone use Mana technically makes everyone a mage, which might be an important part of the worldbuilding.

In some games, Stamina might be expressed not as specific points, but how a character can't move more than a few times, or only once, per turn, explained as them being tired out or something. If that "tired" state can be triggered by the enemy, it's this trope. Speaking of what happens when stamina runs out, there might be an Ability Depletion Penalty for losing all your stamina, because people have the real-world logic for that to make sense. Justifying penalties such as possibly collapsing.

This trope is a cousin of Cooldown Manipulation, because cooldowns are sometimes about some abstract "stamina" while this trope deals with values directly named such. Compare Cast from Stamina, where it's the player themselves that cause their own stamina to be drained. See also Life Drain, Mana Drain, and Mana Burn. As with any other type of damage, a Damage Over Time-type Status Effect is one way this can be done, and so can overlap. Compare and contrast other Status Effects like "Exhausted".

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Examples:

Tabletop Games

• Ars Magica:
  • A mage can use a Perdo Corpus spell to inflict Fatigue levels, which cause escalating penalties to the target's actions and can ultimately knock them out for hours. It's especially nasty against other mages, since spellcasting often has a cost in Fatigue.
  • The standard Wizard Duel in Magical Society is the rite of certamen, which translates the mages' powers into elaborate visual displays that only damage Fatigue instead of causing Wounds. If a duelist loses due to falling unconscious, the winner may salt the wound by casting one extra spell on them, within limits.
• Battle Spirits: Creature cards can only be used once, then they must rest. But, some attacks can make them rest without having done anything.
• Cardfight!! Vanguard: Creature cards can only be used once, then they must rest. But, some attacks can make them rest without having done anything.
• Champions. END (endurance) is a characteristic that measures how much energy a character has available to physically exert themselves and use their super powers. It is possible to buy a power that drains, transfers or destroys other characters' END, thus causing them to run out of energy for such tasks.
• The Dark Sun campaign setting, Monstrous Compendium Appendix II: Terrors Beyond Tyr. On the world of Athas, undead can have a variety of random powers. One of those powers is to drain 1-4 points of a specific attribute by touch, such as Constitution.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition:
    • Several monsters have attacks that can drain an opponent's Constitution, which can cause unconsciousness or death.
    • A night hag can ride a victim in their sleep. Each time a night hag does so, the victim permanently loses 1 point of Constitution.
    • A galltrit drains 1 point of Constitution each four combat rounds that it drains blood from a victim.
    • A mihstu drains 1 point of Constitution each combat round that it envelops its opponent.
    • When the penanggalan feeds on a victim, they drain 1 point of Constitution.
    • After a pernicon bites a victim, it will drain 1 point of Constitution each combat round thereafter until either the pernicon is killed or the victim dies.
  • Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: Characters who heavily exert themselves may take either nonlethal damage (which knocks things out instead of killing them) or the Fatigued and then Exhausted conditions, which last until they've had a chance to rest. They can also be inflicted in other ways:
    • A number of low-level spells (such as touch of fatigue) are Status Infliction Attacks for these conditions as a temporary status ailment. Higher-level magic (such as waves of exhaustion) can inflict the "real" versions of these conditions. Most of these spells tend to be in the Necromancy school and/or associated with intense heat or cold.
    • Characters can choose to deal nonlethal damage with their attacks, though they take a -4 penalty on their attack roll unless fighting unarmed or with a weapon designed for it.
    • Creatures which lack a Constitution score (i.e. constructs, undead and other non-living enemies) have effectively limitless stamina, making them immune to these attack forms.
    • Creatures with the Regeneration ability treat all attacks as nonlethal unless they have Anti-Regeneration properties, and heal away some of their nonlethal damage each round.^note And before you ask, regenerating creatures lose that ability if they're turned into something without a Constitution score.
  • 5th Edition has the Sickening Radiance spell, which creates light but damages its victims, causes them to glow, and makes them take a level of exhaustion (which gets worse every time, with six levels causing death) while they stay in the area. The exhaustion is removed when the spell ends.
• Eberron: The Battleshifter Training feat lets Shifters fatigue enemies by repeatedly dodging their attacks (and also grants a damage bonus against enemies who are tired or dazed in some way).
  • In 3rd edition, draining Constitution is more like Maximum HP Reduction.
• Magic: The Gathering: As part of the lore, "tapping" cards on the field (the phase that comes after attacking or activating the ability of a card, rendering it unable to act again, unless you have workarounds for this). There will be cards with abilities that can force them into this state before they can even get a chance to attack or be unable to be used to block enemy attacks.

Video Games

• Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura: Bludgeoning weapons such as staves, hammers, and maces often do poor health damage but lots of fatigue damage, allowing you to damage an opponent's stamina and knock them unconscious before killing them. Since magick is Cast from Stamina, this also makes them useful anti-mage weapons.
• The Bravely Default series: The games use Brave Points, which allow you to act up to four times but renders you unable to act for the next couple of turns. There are Special Attacks that can be modified so they can decrease up to three of the enemy's Brave Points. There are also certain job abilities that allow you to decrease brave points as listed below, with each game having new classes:
  • First game:
    • The Time Mage's Slow World, which lowers the BP of all allies and enemies by 1 every two turns.
    • The Swordmaster's Squeaky Wheel, which reduces a target's BP by 1, but only works 30% of the time on certain enemies and bosses.
    • The Spiritmaster's Moderation, which reduces BP of all allies and enemies with 1 or more by 1 and vice-versa.
    • The Vampire's Battle Thirst, which allows the user to absorb 1 BP from the target.
  • Bravely Second:
    • The Exorcist's Undo BP, which reverts the target's BP to its previous value at the beginning of the previous turn.
    • The Kaiser's Citadel lowers the BP of all allies and enemies by 1 every two turns.
• Card City Nights 2: Cards can only remain active for so long after being powered, and some cards can make them run out faster.
• Diablo II: There are monsters after Act 1 onwards that appear that can drain stamina from the player when attacking. The most notable ones are Swarms and Giant Mosquitoes.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls Online: there's a Stamina stat, and corresponding damage effects. It was called "Fatigue" in Oblivion, but that change was only for that game.
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
    • The "Ravage Stamina" poison reduces the target's maximum stamina, instead of the current.
    • Frost damage can cause the victim to lose stamina as well as health.
• In Evil Genius, applying the "Capture" tag to a character will cause your minion's attacks to deplete their endurance stat instead of their health.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, the Briar Caltrop power-up causes a ring of briars to grow around the user's chocobo, rapidly sapping the stamina gauge of any other chocobo to come in contact with it. This leaves the victims unable to accelerate and lagging behind the competition unless they can restore it with power-up or a skill they've learned.
• In For Honor, stamina draining is the main feature of the Jormungard class. He has four ways to execute a move that does this, easily knocks down an enemy who had lost all the stamina and does very high damage to whoever is knocked down, be it caused by him or his allies.
• Genshin Impact:
  • In the Talent material farming domain "Forsaken Rift", there exist a special effect called "Condensed Ice" in which, if your characters become affected with Cryo, their stamina consumption (for dashing or performing Charged Attack) will increase; this lasts until the Cryo status is removed.
  • The Elite Mook "Abyss Herald: Frost Fall" has some attacks that can burn through your character's stamina gauge if they hit.
• Metal Gear: Most games in the series from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty onwards feature a stamina gauge of some sort, which can be drained with non-lethal weapons like tranquilizers, flashbangs, or CQC. The effects of this vary between games, but it generally results in slower Regenerating Health and worse weapon handling. Of course, zero stamina means a knockout.
• Pokémon: Power Points are like this, but for individual skills. There are moves that will drain them, such as Eerie Spell (reduces Power Points of the last move used by the target by 3), as well as the Pressure ability (removes an extra Power Point from all moves that target them).
• An important mechanic in the Punch-Out!! series. You start each match with a number of stamina points that vary between each opponent. Getting hit, hitting the enemy while he's defending or blocking too much reduces stamina and losing all of it prevents you from attacking or defending. You get some back each time you dodge.
• In Quest for Glory II, ghouls' attacks deplete the Hero's stamina rather than health. If his stamina is 0, a ghoul's attack will kill him regardless of his health.
• Vermintide II: Effects like the toxic pool in "Convocation of Decay" and the Bile Troll's vomit attack both cause Damage Over Time and deplete the character's Stamina, which they use to block attacks and shove enemies. Worse, there's an Ability Depletion Penalty for running out of Stamina.

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