Stock

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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 KOed the fewest number of times, either up to a maximum number or to a time limit.

Solo

An icon for denoting incomplete things.

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.

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 stock ball 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.

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.

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

Versus Mode

Stock is a setting in Versus Mode in which the winner is the last player with remaining lives. In stock setting, the game allocates to each player a number of lives, which are depleted one by one each time the player is sent off the stage.

The word "stock" can also be used to describe each life: "We played with 4 stock." Stock setting with a time control is the standard setting for tournaments. It can also be used to indicate how much a player beat another, i.e. Ay says "I 4-stocked Bee" if Ay had 4 stock when he removed Bee's last life.

JV X-Stocked

Another variation of this is called the JV X-Stock, which is when one player finishes off a person with 1-4 stock remaining but has 0% on that stock, thereby adding one stock to the total and calling it a "JV 2-5-stock." This terminology stems from the idea that if the player hadn't taken that one hit that killed him/her when he/she was at high percentage, the player would have won the battle with one extra stock. The term was created by the player JV, who used to call his 0% finishing wins a JV X-stock, where X represented the value of the remaining stock plus 1.