The red bar in health is the provisional damage of a a character in Street Fighter X Tekken while the yellow is their actual health left.
Provisional damage, also known as "white damage", refers to any and all damage in the Street Fighter games that can be automatically recovered.
Description[]
This section of "temporary damage" is represented by a faded yellow section in some games (e.g. Street Fighter IV ); other games (e.g. Marvel vs. Capcom series and Vampire Savior, the first fighting game from Capcom to use it) represent it with a red, and white section, respectively, in the Health Meter.
In terms of correlating Provisional Damage with realistic details, this may come to represent the idea of the body recovering after being attacked and the nervous system displaying immediate sensations of pain, before such sensations recover to signal wellness, as opposed to sustained injuries and significantly harmed areas of the body. In the case of Street Fighter IV and Focus Attacks, Provisional Damage comes to represent this phenomenon and the body under endurance and adrenaline of withstanding attacks in a defensive stance; in turn, Armor Breaking attacks likely represent attacks with a lot of ki behind them, purposely target weak points of the body, or are dynamically powerful in terms of physiology and physics.
Some games like Vampire Savior uses a mechanic that deals absolute damage that cannot be healed over time, like in a regular fighting game; The aforementioned game's Dark Force is such an example. Also, the length of their provisional damage may also sometimes correlate to the character's additional vulnerability. (Like having large provisional damage will make the character receive even more damage than normal)
In crossover games, provisional damage can only be healed while tagged out. If a character is tagged in while the character still has provisional damage, it will be negated into permanent damage can no longer be healed.
If a player in Street Fighter IV games has a full health bar, but is hit with an attack that is provisional damage and won the round, the character is still considered to have won a perfect victory.
Methods[]
In most of the games, some counter attacks (e.g. Gouken's Kongoshin) negate damage in this way by converting it to provisional damage.
Crossover games[]
When characters take damage in some crossover games, some of the health they lost remains in the Health Bar. Provisional damage in these games can be recovered by switching out the character you are currently controlling. While not active, the character will slowly recover any provisional damage they have.
Street Fighter X Tekken[]
Since forward throws have been changed to remove provisional damage, here Ibuki's Yamikazura takes away all of Hwoarang's said health.
In Street Fighter X Tekken, characters slowly regenerate Provisional damage when they are not the character currently in the fight (tagged out). Super Arts do not cause any provisional damage, meaning all damage from them are non recoverable. Super Armor absorbs only cause provisional damage but can result in a KO if the absorbing character doesn't have any "real" health left".
The 2013 update made major changes to provisional damage. First the indicator was changed from another shade of yellow compared to the life bar to orange for higher contrast. Health is recovered at a much slower pace than in the previous versions in an attempt to end rounds faster, thus less time over games. Grabs and Throws alongside Cross Arts completely takeaway the opponent's recoverable health upon connection. This doesn't extend to Command Grabs such as Zangief's Spinning Piledriver or Air Throws such as Ibuki's Tobizaru meaning they cause damage as normal attacks would.
Street Fighter IV series[]
In the Street Fighter IV series, there are two additional methods of dealing provisional damage:
- Being hit while executing armored attacks, including Abel's Breathless, or a Focus Attack. These attacks have Super Armor that protects against certain numbers of hits (i.e. Breathless takes two, while Focus Attacks and most other armored attacks take one). Some moves have the Armor Break property, which means they ignore armor completely, and deal damage normally.
- Being struck by Gen's Shitenketsu.
In this series of games, any provisional damage is automatically recovered as the match goes on. However, if a character with provisional damage is hit by an attack, the health they have yet to recover is lost in addition to the damage that attack inflicts. Finally, if a character takes more provisional damage than they have health, they will be knocked out.
Also, in Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition, any damage done to an auto-block when using the Lite controls is received as white damage. This can be prevented if incoming damage is blocked by a normal block even though auto-block is active.
Street Fighter V series[]
In Street Fighter V, provisional damage is caused by being hit while in an armored state, blocking a medium or heavy normal or unique attack, or being hit by a V-Reversal. Provisional damage cannot result in a knockout in Street Fighter V. Most of these properties remain in Street Fighter 6 with the exception that provisional damage can result in a knockout, although V-Reversals have been replaced by Drive Reversals, which serve the same purpose.
