Stamina

## What is a Stamina?

**Stamina** is the measure of a character's ability to remain active, exert themselves for long periods of time, and power through harsh circumstances.

This general statistic encompasses a number of different traits and characteristics that operate differently, and that can thus differ within a single character. Because of this and the inherent variability of stamina, it is difficult to create a comprehensive and consistent universal ranking system for these feats, although some guidelines can be established. Because of this, **it is best to explain and source examples of a character's stamina feats rather than simply state a generalised rating**.

The different traits covered under this characteristic in this wiki include;

* **Energy exertion:** Meaning, for how long characters can continue to exert themselves and fight, potentially even without food, water, or rest, bordering on Self-Sustenance at times. Some characters can continue to fight for hours at a time, and extreme cases can fight for much longer without stopping - days, weeks, months, years, even centuries in some cases. Some fights may be harder and more strenuous than others, however, so these can't always be directly compared.
	+ For example, Thor waged a war for 2 years without food or sleep.
* **Pain tolerance:** How much pain a character can endure, and how well they can persevere and continue to function through said pain.
* **Injury tolerance:** How much actual damage a character can withstand and continue to act in spite of it. It is common in fiction to see characters continue to fight despite grievous injuries, such as broken or missing limbs, heavy blood loss, and organ damage. Extreme cases may resemble Type 2 Immortality, with characters temporarily pushing on through injuries that should have killed them. However, as long as an injury remains lethal, it is not actually Type 2 Immortality.
	+ For example, Lancer and other Servants with Battle Continuation can temporarily keep fighting even after taking lethal injuries such as being stabbed through the heart or, in some cases, being decapitated.

Often times, many of these stamina feats occur as a result of strong willpower, potentially Supernatural Willpower in some cases. In these cases, mental exhaustion and the breaking of someone's will can be major contributing factors for the degree of stamina as well.

Just because a character has exceptional stamina in one category doesn't mean that they have exceptional stamina in another, although injury and pain tolerance tend to go hand-in-hand to some degree. For an extreme example, Androids 17 and 18 from *Dragon Ball* have access to an infinite pool of energy, but this only really applies to their ability to exert themselves - it doesn't mean anything for their ability to withstand pain and injuries, which in turn may interfere with their ability to properly use their energy. And although injury and pain tolerance are certainly related, being able to withstand extreme pain doesn't necessarily mean that you can withstand potentially lethal injury and the effects that it will have on your body beyond simple pain. Stamina is also mostly related to one's own physique, the way it stores and burns energy and how it reacts to external factors. This is usually the product of aspects such as training, lifestyle, physiology and more, featuring differences even among the members of the same species, and thus it heavily depends on the single individual. For these reasons it is recommended to not scale stamina between characters that are comparable or superior to each other in terms of statistics such as Attack Potency, Durability etc. It should be allowed only when levels of stamina are explicitly defined as common and natural traits shared by members of the same species or group, or through direct statements, feats and evidences of the characters being comparable in such aspect.

Please note that characters that are mechanical or undead should not automatically be assumed to possess infinite stamina, unless this trait has been clearly defined within the series or by the lore.

## Basic Guidelines

To reiterate, these are only basic guidelines and should not be treated as a replacement for proper explanations, sources, and justifications. Please avoid generic terms such as "high" or "very high" and so on, as well.

**Below Average:** Characters who may be exhausted and driven to their limits by mild exertion and/or disabled by basic injuries.

**Average:** Characters with typical human levels of stamina and pain tolerance.

**Athletic:** Characters with above average human levels of stamina and pain tolerance.

**Peak Human:** Characters who can push themselves to the limits of any normal human's stamina.

**Superhuman:** Characters who can push themselves beyond the limits of any normal human, exerting themselves for long periods of time, pushing on through exceptionally painful circumstances, and acting even when grievously injured.

**Infinite:** Characters with inexhaustible sources of energy at their disposal, allowing them to fight indefinitely, although not necessarily allowing them to ignore crippling pain or fight on through critical injuries.