The way Fantasy Hero originally does Endurance is with the use of two stats: Endurance and Recovery. Both are based off of your Toughness attribute. Since FH doesn’t use the same Toughness scale that I use, I’ll do a quick conversion and give the proposed rule:

Endurance = 20 + Toughness x5

(For negative Toughness I’d use a different conversion, but I don’t think this applies to anyone)

Recovery = 2 + ( Toughness + Size Talents ) /2 Rounded in Character’s favor

So an average person, +0 Toughness, would have 20 Endurance and 2 Recovery. A tough person, +4 Toughness, would have 40 Endurance and 4 Recovery.

Basically, you would not make any more endurance rolls. Instead, each action you do would cost you some Endurance points and when that’s gone, then you’ll just automatically take Fatigue Wounds, using your usual Toughness Roll to avoid negative effects of those wounds such as Dazing, Stunning, and Unconsciousness. Also, the Fatigue wounds would not go away after 10 min, rather your Endurance points would come back after 10 minutes, leaving your with some penalties but reseting how long it will take you to incur more penalties. Likely Fatigue wounds will recover faster than normal wounds.

Typical Endurance Costs:

• A move: each 5” of move costs 1 Endurance (rounded normally), min 1
• Using strength: 1 + Strength score

So, a +1 Strength warrior who makes a half move and attacks would use 3 Energy: 1 for the 3” move, 2 for the attack

• Using Presence: 1 + Presence Score, or normal cost of a spell
• Casting a normal Spell: 3 for every 5 point of power, rounding normally
• Maintaining a spell: 1 for every 5 points of power, rounding normally
• Unusual Spells: some spells have the endurance costs changed or have additional limitations that makes their power level higher

Firemage casts a normal fireball at 30 points and uses 18 Endurance to do that. Shaman does a spirit block and then a spirit lash with +3 Presence and uses 8 endurance, 4 for each maneuver. Demonpriest summons a demon in a ritual that takes an hour: it’s only a 30 pt spell, but with the additional limitation he’s able to cast 75 pt summon spell. It takes 45 Endurance.

• Actions that take concentration: a full phase action that requires concentration such as picking a lock, using Perception to find a hidden foe, hiding, etc. takes 1 Endurance plus any movement

Using Recovery: at the end of every turn you get your Recovery score back. Note, certain draining spells may take your Recovery attribute to 0 in which case you don’t recover.

Taking a Recovery: now this rule will be a lot more straight-forward. You can spend a full-phase action to use your Recovery. You are at no defense when you do this and can take no other actions (you stand there and pant).

Finally, there is such a thing as Magic-Only Endurance, just like in our current system. You would buy a separate pool of endurance at a reduced cost that can only be used for spells and a separate Recovery for that. If your Magic Endurance has a 0 Recovery, then you have go through a ritual to refill your magic power, it will not refill on it’s own. Most magic systems have some thing you can do generate this energy. If your Magic Endurance has a Recovery, it still requires some “magical” connection to refill over time. Firemage may have to have access to a warm fire or be in sunlight to recharge. However, as long as the passive requirements are met, and they are not usually rare, it will refill on it’s own over time just like the normal Physical Endurance pool does. Of course, it is always possible to have a rarer set of requirements which will just make the Recovery cheaper to buy, such as a Water Mage must be completely submerged to recover.

I know many of you have put a lot of points into your Endurance. I’ll take these points and convert them to this new system. I’ll even work with you if you’d like to try to achieve a particular effect like “Just really physically tough” or “Recover fast” or “Lots of Magical Endurance, but not very physical”. Magical Endurance is, of course, cheaper than normal Endurance just like the Magic Toughness stat currently is cheaper than buying normal Toughness. I would probably do away with a Magic Toughness stat because it only had bearing on Endurance rolls, which this will handle instead.