Exhaustion

One-pager. Fatigue, magic, and divine favour are all the same thing: not a point pool you spend down, but a track of exhaustion levels — wound-shaped, but shorter, and cleared by rest, not rolls. You never tally points; you roll to do the tiring thing, and a level piles on when you reach too hard.

The 0–5 track

Exhaustion runs 0 (fresh) to 5, and a level is a penalty to activity the way a wound is — but domain-weighted, not universal:

How a level penalizes you. Each track hits activity that draws on its own pool at full value and everything else at half; tracks stack with each other and on top of any wound penalty. Fatigue is the exception — it drags on everything at full, because a body that's spent is spent whatever it's doing. Add the contributions, then round (half away from zero).

A wizard is at −3 fatigue (a forced march) and −3 mana (a duel). Swinging a sword: −3 (fatigue, full) + half of −3 mana = −5. Casting: −3 mana + half of −3 fatigue = −5. Sweet-talking the innkeeper (neither): half of each = −3.

Getting exhausted

Do something genuinely taxing — a sustained sprint, a long mêlée, a forced march, harsh exposure — and make an EN or WP check (player's choice, as with wounds), the magnitude of the effort a modifier rather than a pile of extra rolls:

• Solid success — you're fine.
• Marginal success / ordinary failure — one level of exhaustion.
• Bad failure — worse, or the effort simply fails.

Some efforts cost a level automatically, no roll — a thing you cannot do without burning yourself.

Recovery — rest, not rolls

You clear one level at a time, deepest first, and the deeper it is the more rest it takes:

So a Spent (3) character sleeps it off to Tired (2), rests down to Winded (1), and a breather clears the last — deep exhaustion is a slow climb out, not a nap. And past level 3, keep checking EN/WP or exhaustion starts converting into real wounds — you can drop from over-exertion, or die of exposure.

Magic, and the other powers

By default magic is just fatigue: gathering power is taxing, and casting in a mana-poor place is simply more exhausting, a mana-rich one less — a modifier, not a second resource to track. A setting that wants magic to feel separate can give it its own track (Mana), and likewise Spirit for mystic disciplines; each track wears down independently (your Mana can be wrung dry while your Spirit is fresh) and stacks per the rule above.

However it's tracked, the shape is gather then weave: a gather roll whose ease factor reflects how much you're asking for (a candle-flame is trivial; a firestorm brutal). Read its QR — a solid success and the power comes free and clear; a marginal one and it comes but costs a level; a QR10 fizzles and costs a level. And a caster may volunteer a level for a one-off +4 — reaching past your limit on purpose, reliable but the bill compounds.

Divine favour is different — it's earned, not rested

Divine favour is spent like the others (temporarily, in the moment), but it isn't refilled by sleep. It's gated by Piety — which behaves like a skill, except it is driven by deeds, not experience: acts of devotion, sacrifice, and living by the god's tenets raise it; betraying them lowers it. A priest doesn't rest to recover standing with their god; they earn it back. (Full treatment under Religion.)

Designer's Note: the stamina/mana/piety point-pools are all gone, and good riddance — a check you can't fudge beats a pool everyone quietly forgets to subtract from. Folding fatigue, magic, and faith into one exhaustion mechanic means one thing to learn, and the "spend a level for +4" lever gives a desperate character a real, costly choice instead of a hard wall. Letting the toughness roll be EN or WP means the stoic and the stubborn both endure, by different roads.