TEMP: Mana-like Resource Audit

Summary

Nine distinct resource currencies are in play across powers and power actions. Only four are defined anywhere in the rules.

Chroma (classes/witch.md:57) and Ethos (classes/priest.md:45) are tracked state, not spendable pools, and no power or power action reads them — only class-level casting-style text does. Listed here only so they aren't mistaken for gaps.

Soul Shards

Warlock's economy. The only currency with both an earn side and a spend side written into the powers themselves.

Powers that generate shards

Actions with a fixed shard cost

All fifteen declare the cost in special:, not energy: — see Inconsistencies.

Actions where shards are an optional upgrade

Shards as a penalty or a cut

• possession — host body dies while possessed → lose shards equal to your rank
• powers/warlock/sprites.md — rank 2 pranks cost 1 shard
• actions/powers/warlock/broker.md — collect 1 shard per contract rank from each party on pay or breach
• actions/powers/warlock/call-in.md — breach on a called-in Service seizes shards equal to the Debt
• actions/powers/warlock/devour-soul.md — "the shards know where they came from"

Vitae

Witch's currency. Explicitly binary in the class doc ("you either have it or you don't", classes/witch.md:54) — but the actions treat it as a numeric pool, with costs of 1, 2, 3, and 4. This is the single largest contradiction in the resource rules.

Actions that grant Vitae

absorb-magic (incl. temporary Vitae at rank 4), chill-touch (1/rank in aura mode), curse, drain-soul (expend the soul gem), eyebite, necrosis, overlooked, soulgaze, transfusion, withering-gaze, rogue/steal-vitality (1, +1 crit/sneak, +2 both)

Actions that spend Vitae

Power-level Vitae references

powers/witch/chill-touch.md, powers/witch/evil-eye.md, powers/witch/veil.md (Glimmer feat: re-veil without expending Vitae), powers/rogue/soul-blade.md (the Assassin's entry point into Vitae)

Mana — undefined, but used

No class grants Mana. No rules section defines it. It is nevertheless spent by twelve action files and referenced by three powers. This is the clearest orphan.

Mana also survives outside the powers tree in basics/actions/dispel.md (dispel costs and the -10/point penalty are defined entirely in terms of Mana cost) and in system/conditions/meek.md ("maximum Mana is reduced to 50%"). Both are unusable as written.

Focus

Psion's currency, and the best-specified of the lot — Focus is concentration slots, so spending it has a real opportunity cost (classes/psion.md:10). Note the distinct verbs: expend (consumed), reserve/slot (held, not consumed).

Death Energy — undefined, but used

Elementalist's Decay/spores currency. Never defined in classes/elementalist.md or anywhere else; it appears only at point of use. (The phrase also turns up as flavor prose in equipment/inscription.md:412, unconnected to the currency.)

• actions/powers/elementalist/magic-mushrooms.md — energy: 1 Death Energy
• actions/powers/elementalist/cordyceps.md — energy: 2 death energy
• actions/powers/elementalist/fungal-construction.md — energy: 2 death energy
• actions/powers/elementalist/fungal-bastion.md — 1 death energy or a corpse/organic object
• actions/powers/elementalist/fungal-bastion-rank-2.md — 2 death energy or a small+ corpse
• powers/elementalist/control-water.md — 1 death energy per burst radius; Wilting Touch trades the save for a point

The corpse-or-energy substitution in Fungal Bastion is the only place in the system where a currency has a physical-component alternative. Worth keeping.

Panache

Self-contained and fully specified in its own power file — the cleanest resource in the game, and a good template. Earn on crit/Sneak Attack/daring check, cap 1/rank, wiped at end of encounter.

• powers/rogue/panache.md — definition
• actions/powers/rogue/riposte.md — energy: 1 panache; free at rank 2 when triggered by Parry
• actions/powers/rogue/derring-do.md — energy: 1 panache

Blooded

A binary state rather than a pool, with a rising-DC decay clock (Con save DC 10 + 5/round) — the mechanic Vitae's class doc claims to be. Defined at feats/ancestry/vampiric-nature.md:18.

• actions/powers/ancestry/feed.md — grants Blooded
• actions/powers/ancestry/charming-gaze.md — requires Blooded
• actions/powers/ancestry/blink.md — recharges on entering Blooded
• actions/powers/ancestry/bullet-time.md — requires Blooded, ends it
• actions/powers/ancestry/slam.md — grants half the Blood of a bite

Called out in the 8.18 notes as the model for Ancestry specialness.

Corruption and ablative charges

Corruption (classes/warlock.md:37) is the shard sink — it makes a shard-costing effect permanent at the price of bodily drift. The class section is a stub marked TBD, but three actions and one power already point at it: mutate, soul-splice, demon-claw, powers/warlock/metamorphosis.md.

Encounter/rest-scoped ablative charges are a fourth pattern, unnamed and undefined as a shared rule: powers/fighter/bone-shield.md (1 charge/rank per encounter), powers/artificer/power-armor.md (1/rank, short rest), powers/elementalist/frost-armor.md (short rest), powers/disposition/child-of-the-sun.md (charges on sunlight exposure).

Cross-currency bridges

Three Rogue archetype powers are explicit gateways into another class's currency, and one of them converts between currencies:

• powers/rogue/soul-blade.md → Vitae (links classes/witch.html#vitae)
• powers/rogue/psiblade.md → Focus (links classes/psion.html#focus)
• powers/rogue/hex.md → Soul Shards (links classes/warlock.html#soul-shards), and its Fuel the Bargain clause lets a shard pay any Warlock energy cost — the only conversion rule in the system.

powers/rogue/mandate.md is the same pattern for Priest Ethos, though Ethos is not a spendable resource.

Inconsistencies to resolve

1. Vitae is binary in the class doc, numeric in every action. classes/witch.md:54 says you have it or you don't; actions charge 1, 2, 3, and 4. Pick one.
2. Mana is spent by 12 actions and granted by nothing. Either define it, or retag those actions. The Psion four are almost certainly meant to be Focus; the Witch six are almost certainly meant to be Vitae.
3. Three Witch actions contradict themselves within one file — energy: says Mana, the body says Vitae: reanimate, hasten-death, transfusion.
4. Costs live in two different frontmatter fields. Witch/Psion/Rogue use energy:; all fifteen shard-costing Warlock actions use special: prose instead. Nothing can query costs uniformly until these agree.
5. Thirteen Vitae-costing actions have no energy: field at all — the cost exists only in body prose: steal-vitality, antimagic-zone, blood-bending, chill-touch, contagion, curse, duplicates, exsanguinate, eyebite, mirror-divination, overlooked, summon-spirit, withering-gaze.
6. Death Energy is used by six files and defined by none.
7. Two energy: fields are empty — precipitate, precipitate-concentration.
8. energy: 0 mana on telekinesis — is zero meaningful, or should the field be absent?
9. Naming collision: the Witch action soul-shard.md is a resurrection gem costing silver pieces, unrelated to the Warlock's Soul Shards. Two different things, one name.
10. Dispel and the Meek condition are written entirely in Mana (basics/actions/dispel.md, system/conditions/meek.md) and are therefore unplayable. These sit outside the powers tree but block any Mana removal.

Bearing on the 8.18 question

The 8.18 notes say "nobody has missed Mana / Spell Slots since 8.5 basically nullified Soul Shards". The files disagree: Soul Shards are load-bearing in 36 files and Warlock's Contract power is built entirely on the shard economy. What has gone quiet is Mana — spent everywhere, granted nowhere. If the goal is fewer currencies, Mana is the one already dead on the page; Soul Shards, Vitae, Focus, and Panache are all live.