Exhaust/Ready is the true action gate

Source: Theory | Confidence: Speculative | Category: Tempo

The exhaust/ready cycle is the fundamental bottleneck on combat output, not AP. Every demon is gated to roughly one attack per rest cycle (4 cycles) because attacks require exhaust, and demons are only readied at rest phases. AP cost reduction (e.g. Murmur's -2 AP) saves resources but does not increase throughput. The strongest demons are those that break the exhaust/ready bottleneck: readying effects, abilities that ignore exhaust costs, and out-of-turn actions. Evaluating demon power should start with how they interact with the exhaust constraint, not AP efficiency.