Stock

File:Stock display.jpg

The character icons indicate how much stock, or lives, Mario and Yoshi have remaining.

Stock is the term the Super Smash Bros. series uses to describe what other games call "lives". In the Solo modes, such as Classic Mode, exhausting all the players' stocks brings them to the Game Over screen, where they may be offered the option to Continue. In Versus Mode, it describes the mode played won on the basis of which player is KO'd the fewest number of times, either up to a maximum number or to a time limit.

Solo

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Classic Mode

Players can choose to begin with between one and five stocks, with three as the default number. This cannot be increased after starting and before quitting or receiving a "Game Over", although their damage percentage resets between matches as well as after losing a stock. Stocks remaining are displayed as small dots above the damage percentage. The player is given the bonus "Completed without losing a life" if they finish the mode without losing a single stock.

Self-destructing in the Target Smash!! (and its predecessors) Bonus Stages does not cost the player a stock. Continues are possible, but cost half the player's current points and a set number of coins (10 coins for Easy mode, increasing by ten for each difficulty level up to 50 for Intense) each time.

All-Star Mode

Each player has only one stock to complete the entire mode, with their damage percentage being maintained between matches, although they can use up to three Heart Containers (five in two-player mode) which lie in the All-Star Rest Area to help maintain their single stock.

Continues are treated in the same way as Classic Mode.

Adventure Mode

Super Smash Bros Melee

The player can choose their number of stocks, similar to Classic Mode. In Melee, the number of stocks isn't shown with dots. Instead, the head of the character is shown.

The Subspace Emissary (Super Smash Bros. Brawl)

Players are assigned a set number of stocks to complete a level, which they can supplement by finding Stock Balls. This does not carry over between levels.

Stock count is displayed on the left-hand side of the screen, as a head icon of each character remaining in their current party. In the event of the player holding more stocks than their current party size, the headshots are supplemented by Smash Bros. icons and the order of play repeats (i.e., a player with five stocks and a party consisting of, in order, Mario, Link, Samus and Donkey Kong would automatically use Mario again on their fifth stock.) This can only occur if the player has fewer characters available to choose from for their party than the number of stocks for the level or if they pick up a stock ball during it - they cannot deliberately engineer such repeats in a free character choice. If a second player enters a game in progress, they use up one of the available stocks and take the next character in the sequence - this means that if player 1 has no spare stocks, the second player cannot join.

When a player reaches a cutscene and can rechoose which characters to use, their stock is reset to the default number. After the level is completed, replays do not play these cutscenes, which can effectively reduce the number of stocks a player has to complete the level and thus substantially increases the difficulty of long levels such as The Subspace Bomb Factory II onsuch replays.

In the event of a player losing all their stocks, they are sent to the Continue screen.

Stadium

Target Test/Smash!! and Home-Run Contest do not use stocks.

Event matches

Most events are played with one or two stocks available, displayed in the same way as Classic Mode.

Multi-Man mode

All versions of Multi-Man Melee and Brawl are single matches played to a single stock.

Boss Battles Mode

Uses a single stock in a similar way to All-Star Mode, including damage carrying over between matches and Heart Containers in the Rest Area, but without the option to Continue after a Game Over.

Group

Stock is a mode that is playable in versus mode. In this, the game acts as a "last man standing" game, where a player/team wins if and only if all the other players/teams have lost all of their stocks (lives). If time is turned on as well, then the player who has the most stocks remaining (and the lowest percentage on that stock in the case of a tie) wins. As with all modes, a player who has lost all their stocks cannot participate in the match, and can only merely watch. However, it is possible to turn on a mode called share stock, where teammates can give away stocks to their fallen team member(s). In tournaments and most serious matches, the mode is set to stock match due to the orderly, set fashion that it creates.

When a player defeats another player in a 1v1 match, and still has more than 1 stock remaining, they are said to have "X-stocked the opponent", where X is the number of stocks the winning player has. This is often used for varying levels of bragging rights for skill. For example, 3-stocking an opponent shows a greater difference of skill than if the player "merely" 2-stocked them. When a player defeats another while having only 1 stock left, but with 0%, then they are said to have "whole-stocked" their opponent.