Fuel Meter of Power

The character's life or powers are limited in number of uses: Once they run out of them, either they can never use that power again, or they die. Usually said doom is averted before it ever comes to that.

Not the Hour of Power, which is limited in period but can always be reused or recharged. See also Power Degeneration.

Should probably be merged somehow into Cast From Lifespan.


 * Spawn from the titular comic had a necroplasm meter for some of his special powers.
 * The new Hourman had exactly one hour of total time he could use to visit his father in an otherworldly realm.
 * Miroku from Inuyasha. The "wind tunnel" in his hand is almost story-breakingly powerful (it's basically a personal black hole) but it will eventually consume him regardless (unless the demon who put it there is killed), but using it to inhale monsters accelerates the process, and injuries to that hand shave off even more time.
 * Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter has exactly this; the main character's draconic powers are limited by how long he can remain in his Super Mode state. When the meter is full, he dies. Game Over. No way to lower it, whatsoever. The game is designed with the expectation that you'll eventually overtax it and die -- then you can start over from the beginning, keeping much of your character advancement and items and unlocking new cutscenes that reveal more of the story. Repeat until you can clear the game without going over.
 * Nico Minoru's Staff of One in the Marvel series Runaways. The staff can cast any spell imaginable, but can't cast the same spell more than once.
 * The Lightning in Medievil can't be recharged in either game and is the only weapon with no way to restock.
 * This was rectified in the PSP Updated Rerelease the first game- now the Lightning is just prohibitively expensive to recharge.
 * In Maburaho, all magic users can only use their powers a limited number of times. If they use up all their spells, they die and their bodies crumble to ash.
 * In The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, the main character discovers a device that allows time travel. Unbeknownst to her there was a limited number of uses, and she used them up on trivial and inconsequential things, leaving her out of uses when she really needed it to save a life.
 * Power Rangers has invoked this twice with the Mighty Morphin Green Ranger, then again with the Lightspeed Rescue Titanium Ranger. In both cases, the Rangers originally had unlimited use of their power before the bad guys came and put a cap on it (and the Titanium Ranger was eventually able to remove his restriction).
 * The Sentai that Mighty Morphin is based on Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger had the same thing with their green ranger, which was actually what forced it to be used in Power Rangers due to stock footage constraints. Also notable Zyuranger's green ranger
 * .hack's data drain powers increase your viral corruption, although it is possible to lower it, overuse results in random chance of various effects (both positive and negative), eventually resulting in game over from viral takeover.
 * In the Ghost Rider film, the previous Rider fades away after one last change.
 * In Puella Magi Madoka Magica,.
 * One of the Xanth books features as a key character a little girl who appears to have the talent to have all the talents, ever. Eventually the heroes notice a pattern, or specifically, a lack thereof; it turns out that the limitation (which every talent has) is that she can only use each talent once. After this, she gets much more conservative with it; before, she was kind of a spoiled brat because if things didn't go the way she wanted, she'd just magic them into something more to her liking, and not even her parents could do anything about it.
 * To clarify, she has every magic talent possible; but she can use similar talents for the same effect. For example, she could make clean drinking water by cleansing it, distilling it, reversing time to when it was clean, transmuting it, etc. In another book, The Dastard, she finds out that the limitation is actually that each spell is on a years-long cooldown. Unfortunately, his talent allows him the ability of reversing a short period of time; and he caused her not to come to the realization. So far, she still doesn't know.
 * Emiya Shirou in Fate Stay Night last scenario. He can use his projection magic only 3 times after defeating Dark Berserker with Archer arm.
 * Steven Spielberg's Taken did this with a young alien boy who eventually burned himself out using his powers.