Stress is a type of temporary trait for measuring the health and wellbeing of a character, but is not as focussed on physical health as statistics such as hit points. The term stress is used for several different forms of such traits (see below), but the specific mechanic referred to by that name on this wiki works as follows: When a character would suffer a negative consequence, that character's player can choose for the character to instead suffer stress in order to mitigate the consequence. The character's capacity to suffer stress is a limited player resource, and there may be additional limits on how much of the consequence can be mitigated (e.g. in Fate Core characters have stress boxes of specific sizes, only one of which can be used to block damage per attack; in Blades in the Dark, the amount of stress a character suffers to mitigate an effect is randomised). When a character can take no more stress, they will either be taken out or take a more permanent condition or harm (often called trauma). Regular stress is often easy to recover with enough time, either by resting or in downtime.
Other mechanics known as stress[]
Other traits that measure harm and health have been referred to as stress. These include statistics similar to hit points, but often with a numerically increasing value (much like the sanity mechanic in Call of Cthulhu), or conditions, often ones that may apply a negative modifier to the character.