Thinking a little about the concept of the Stagger Gauge in video games - a meter you have to fill before an enemy is stunned and starts taking actual significant damage, usually 10x compared to the amount you're doing normally while trying to fill Stagger.
And I just find myself wondering if that's just to pad out combat, it makes the periods before you get to do the real damage just busywork, in a way. Or a fairer interpretation is that Stagger is just a secondary HP bar in a way that refills every so often - you're still working towards getting the overall HP to zero, it's just obfuscated by being divvied up between two meters.
