Stamina's Impact

The main gameplay consequence of using these stamina rules is that a quick 10- or 20-minute rest can restore most groups to full or nearly full health via Taking a Breather and Treating Wounds as necessary, allowing more encounters with shorter breaks in between. Additionally, charismatic or otherwise diplomatic characters gain fun and useful ways to bolster their allies.

Because spells that heal Hit Points don’t restore Stamina Points, it’s a little harder to heal up completely in the middle of a fight. This can mean that fights become deadly after characters have been beaten down, possibly causing retreats to be more frequent, but the retreats themselves are shorter. The focus of the game can stay consistently within encounters, with less managing of time and resources outside of battle.

No-Limit Stamina

If you want a fast-paced, almost superheroic game, you can skip the Resolve Point component of this subsystem and simply make Taking a Breather and Rally free. This gives the characters a lot of staying power, meaning that the group will typically keep adventuring until they run out of spells for the day, rather than having the additional pressure of running out of Resolve Points. If you use this approach, omit the Steel Your Resolve feat, as it’s too powerful if there’s no cost to use it! Alternatively, if you want to keep it, you can require a character to Take a Breather before they can Steel their Resolve again.