Okay so I’m writing for maybe 4th time. Time to finish this post!
I was thinking about what I’m missing in KCD and I realized that Stamina system (afaik), is currently working kinda “arcadish”. What I will try to describe, will be most likely hard to implement, but will be very handy and very nice to have in the game that is trying to give feeling of very realistic combat system. Even more, when you consider how crucial is stamina for succesful fighting.
So, let’s get some theory 
I understand, that in game player has some static pool of stamina, that is used by his physical activity, and restored while resting, or at least not moving. Classy game style. This is basically what roughly happens in real life, but not entirely. It’s a bit more sophisticated.
Your RL stamina is influenced by your cardiovascular (heart&blood) and muscular (muscles, tendons, maybe more…) systems. I’m not doctor, so I’m sorry if my expression is not precise
It all depends on how fast and how effectively your heart can deliver oxygen to your muscles. Simply, your muscles don’t work without oxygen.
For best performance, your body has to be “warmed up”. Without warming up, it won’t give you 100% performace. In some cases, it won’t even be able supply whole body with oxygen, so your muscles will simply stop working and you will fall.
Now some practical stuff.
Some time ago, I tried to run up the hill. I had to overcome 140 m in height on 300 m distance. The worst part was starting 120 meters with 80 height meters, that’s like 66% steep. Without any warming up, I simply started running. I’ve got to half of first part, still trying to at least keep feeling of running, but muscles simply stopped working. I fell down, had to catch the breath and recover.
What you see on image below is my heart rate as recorded by my fitness band. You can see 3 parts there. First part where heart rate was a bit higher than usual, thats first tens of meters, before I fell down. Lower part after is part where I’m relaxing (at first while walking, then just standing), and when it grows again when I started running again last 500m. Record is almost 9 minutes long.
Later, I tried on different hill with similar proportions, but now with warming up and managed to get up. That steep hill was cruel, but I’ve got there. As you can see on picture below, it took longer because of warming up, like half an hour. On beginning you can see that my heart ticked on low rates, but with time it got into rates from where it was able to deliver oxygen more effectively to muscles. Peak is at mark 196, that’s where I was climbing the steepest hill. After comes relaxed part of slow jogging towards the end. Some faster running followed, but that is not matter for us now.
I don’t want to make commercial here, so I’ll tell only it’s recorded with optical HR sensor, consisting of two LEDs and I wear it properly three inches above wrist during activity.
How can this look in fencing?
During longsword HEMA tournaments, I saw that warmed up fighter can defeat more experienced, but relaxed fencer. Once I almost managed to defeat one much more experienced fighter. I went to duel properly warmed up, while my oponnent was relaxed as he didnt fight yet, because I had simply faster moves and reactions. I managed to give him 3 fast cuts on hands. Perhaps it woke him up, so he gave me one proper and swift cut on the head. I managed to give another one on hands (however not clean, almost wasn’t recognized) and since then, it was slaughter. One strike to head or torso after another. I wasn’t able to give at least one strike to finish 5 points for victory. It ended 5:4 for my oponnent. Very good fight, I must say
So according to what I saw, warmed up fighter can defeat even more experienced and relaxed one.
What can this bring to the game?
For game purpose, I can imagine stamina as dynamic pool, instead of static one, that is increasing with physical activity and shrinking while resting. But only to some maximum size. Stats in KCD are derived from what you are doing, so let’s say you have stats that give you pool of stamina to some number, allowing you some decent physical activity. When relaxed, it gradually shrinks to let’s say 40% of it’s maximum size. But if you run some distance (for example 2 km while not having armor and not carrying a thing) your stamina pool grows to 100% of it’s maximum capacity.
However if you run longer distance than suitable for warming up, you are slowly getting tired and later even exhausted. In this case, only resting can bring you out of this.
Also it can have impact on your charming stats. Relaxed guy is much better talker than sweating and heavily breathing guy and is more able to convince someone.
I understand that development of this game is already very expensive thing and it’s in later stage of development, so I don’t think we will see something like this in final game. I simply wanted to post this as someone can perhaps mod this one day
