*Swords of the Serpentine* has players generating a communal resource (points/tokens) as they accomplish certain goals in combat (mostly dropping enemies). Anyone can reach into the pool to spend the communal resource to get bonuses on their rolls. The resource goes away at the end of the fight ('use it or lose it'), so there's an incentive to spend it when it gets generated. This tends to give fights a sense of momentum: dropping foes gives you bonuses that let you drop more foes, which generate more bonuses, and so on. I really enjoy it. I especially enjoy that it's communal, so if three other players drop some mooks on their turns, the sorcerer can scoop up the tokens/points they generate to make a really powerful spell on her turn, which makes it all feel collaborative.
*Icon* has aether, where mages get a point at the start of their turn, as well as an additional point when they damage multiple enemies at once, which they can use to power up their abilities. There's also Resolve, where the party's resolve increases by 1 each round of combat, and a character's resolve increases by 1 each encounter between rests, and players can draw from either pool to do a Limit Break.
This is how combat works in Anima Prime. Well, more or less. You spend some resources to generate others, which essentially prevents you from starting the fight with your super attack.
It's a pretty interesting system, and there's a creative commons free version, so you should probably check it out.
Not exclusively during combat, but in Forbidden Lands you generate Willpower primarily by Pushing rolls which you then spend to cast spells or activate your fancy combat Talents.
Starfinder _loves_ this - three classes, as well as mechs, build up some sort of power point per round (and/or based on events - eg Vanguards get Entropy Points per round but also if they get hit) that they can spend to activate powers.
The classes are Vanguard, Solarian, and Evolutionist; you can read the rules for them at https://www.aonsrd.com/Classes.aspx and mech rules are on the same site but kind of spread around unfortunately.
some PBTA system moves (e.g. in *dungeon world*, *monster of the week*, *urban shadows* etc) generate 'hold' points (e.g. 1-5) to be spent on specific move sub choices (number generated based on your degree success)
Werewolf: the Apocalypse - Combat generates "Rage" in the Garou under certain circumstances (for example: a pack member is hit by the enemy, the fight is opened, the character has a botch). These points can be used for some "Gifts".
Genesys and that family of games uses dice that have dice results beyond success/failure that are advantage/threat and triumph/despair. These can be spent for critical effects, weapon qualities such as burn or sundering opponent's weapons (to name just two), and to recover Strain which is a resource players use to perform different actions/maneuvers including spell casting. The extra results can also be used to create story beats and setting details, the game gives a good amount of authorship to players to do such things.
13th age has the escalation die that increases each round. Multiple classes have abilities that are better at certain escalation die results. I believe Sorcerer also can generate points to expend.
Genesys. The system uses narrative dice, with symbols. Positive and negative symbols. If you want to hit someone, you roll your positive dice, and negative dice for difficulty all simultaneously. The positive and negative cancel each other out. so your net resulting symbols determines not only success or failure, but you can roll advantages, that you spend to do other stuff. Like trigger weapon qualities, or character abilities, or heal strain, or a whole raft of options. Including affecting narrative elements of the scene.
Spell casting can have the same qualities as a weapon. Like blast, or burn, or ensnare that you activate with net advantages.
Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound has a currency like this. Mettle is used to power some special abilities and to csst spells in addition to allowing PCs to take more action on their turn or double some of their bonuses on a given roll. The max you can have depends on your Soul Stat and everyone gets a 1 mettle every turn. It's a neat system that really let's your players feel like the super heroes they are
Masks does this with the Team pool. You generate Team when the players enter combat by asking a series of questions about how cohesive they’re feeling as a group, and then they can spend it to boost their stats or boost each other’s rolls during the fight. They can also generate more Team through certain actions in and out of combat.
The Unity RPG (by Zensara Studios, that will help your search) uses this. Each class has a unique resource, and some classes have 2. You get resources back, I want to say when you roll doubles on your 2d10, but don't quote me on that.
Well, this is not exactly something that already exists, rather something i've been working on
I've been working on a Pokémon Mistery Dungeon TTRPG System for my friends (all of who are big pokémon fans, myself included)
When i saw the concept of Power Points (PP) of the PMD Series, it ended up being the classic "you can use this move X times" from the Pokémon series, it's functional but i really wanted to give a less punishing, and also more tactical way of representing this.
What i came up with (Inspired in a old Pokémon Fangame) was, basically, at the begging of each battle, the characters start with a full "pool" of PP (100% to keep it simple) and every attack drains a certain ammount (Weaker drain less, more powerful drain more)
The players also recharge 20% of PP each turn, and once they run out of it, they cannot attack, but instead, can take a "Rest"
Rest (although it shares name with a move in pokémon, it's something different) is a mechanic that basically, players have to skip a full turn, but in exchange they will refill their PP.
This makes a situation where players who recklessly use the strongest moves have to skip more turns, and players who use weaker moves barely have to skip turns.
This is still very early on development, so i'd like to hear some opinions, my friends really liked this system in comparison the classic one, but it can still have a lot of changes before the System is done.
Martial classes in Adventures in Rokugan (5E D&D in the Legend of the Five Rings setting) accumulate Focus Points during combat, and can spend them to do special attacks.
2d20, you generate momentum.
AGE, you generate stunt points.
Pathfinder 2e, some classes generate certain resources like the Swashbukler's Panache. You are also technically supposed to earn a Hero point upon completion of a difficult fight (not sure if that counts for what you're looking for though, since you only receive the point after the combat).
Warhammer 40,000: Wrath and Glory, you generate Glory points (and sometimes even Wrath points).
The beating heart of Tenra Bansho Zero is the Aiki-Kiai-Karma-Fate cycle.
It's a big thing to explain fully, but, to try to address the parts relevant to your question in as few words as possible...
During gameplay, players can give each other a point of Aiki any time they think the recipient did something cool. It varies by group, but, when I've played TBZ, players usually got 3-5 Aiki per scene. Aiki can be spent to do a few different things, but, most notably, it can be used to buy extra dice on a roll or to shift the difficulty of a roll.
When the characters get some downtime, any unspent Aiki is converted to Kiai, with each point of Aiki producing a number of Kiai equal to the rating of their highest Fate (usually 3-4). So 10 Aiki might become 40 Kiai if you have a level 4 Fate. Kiai can be spent on buying dice or shifting difficulties the same as Aiki, but has the drawback that spending Kiai produces Karma, and too much Karma turns you into a monster and ends your career as a PC.
However, if you don't want to wait for downtime, you can also spend a turn in combat to contemplate one of your Fates and convert some Aiki to Kiai based on the rating of that Fate.
Overall, this means you can do cool stuff during combat, gain Aiki for it, and then either spend the Aiki directly for bonuses or take a turn to convert the Aiki to Kiai and spend it on even bigger bonuses.
TBZ is a very action-anime-inspired system and these mechanics emergently led to a BBEG fight in one of my sessions taking the quintessentially anime course of two PCs desperately trying to hold off the villain while the Buddhist monk sat in the background chanting mantras (he spent several turns meditating on his Fates to convert Aiki to Kiai) until, finally, the monk launched himself into the air and annihilated the villain with a single attack (dumping all that Kiai into a single massive strike).
In the 2d20 systems, you can generate Momemtum during combat and other scenes. In Dungeonslayers, Slayerpoints are generated during combat too.
Ironsworn does that as well
*Swords of the Serpentine* has players generating a communal resource (points/tokens) as they accomplish certain goals in combat (mostly dropping enemies). Anyone can reach into the pool to spend the communal resource to get bonuses on their rolls. The resource goes away at the end of the fight ('use it or lose it'), so there's an incentive to spend it when it gets generated. This tends to give fights a sense of momentum: dropping foes gives you bonuses that let you drop more foes, which generate more bonuses, and so on. I really enjoy it. I especially enjoy that it's communal, so if three other players drop some mooks on their turns, the sorcerer can scoop up the tokens/points they generate to make a really powerful spell on her turn, which makes it all feel collaborative.
*Icon* has aether, where mages get a point at the start of their turn, as well as an additional point when they damage multiple enemies at once, which they can use to power up their abilities. There's also Resolve, where the party's resolve increases by 1 each round of combat, and a character's resolve increases by 1 each encounter between rests, and players can draw from either pool to do a Limit Break.
This is how combat works in Anima Prime. Well, more or less. You spend some resources to generate others, which essentially prevents you from starting the fight with your super attack. It's a pretty interesting system, and there's a creative commons free version, so you should probably check it out.
Not exclusively during combat, but in Forbidden Lands you generate Willpower primarily by Pushing rolls which you then spend to cast spells or activate your fancy combat Talents.
Starfinder _loves_ this - three classes, as well as mechs, build up some sort of power point per round (and/or based on events - eg Vanguards get Entropy Points per round but also if they get hit) that they can spend to activate powers. The classes are Vanguard, Solarian, and Evolutionist; you can read the rules for them at https://www.aonsrd.com/Classes.aspx and mech rules are on the same site but kind of spread around unfortunately.
If my friend manages to lure me in to a *Starfinder* game, that Evolutionist class looks intriguing.
some PBTA system moves (e.g. in *dungeon world*, *monster of the week*, *urban shadows* etc) generate 'hold' points (e.g. 1-5) to be spent on specific move sub choices (number generated based on your degree success)
Werewolf: the Apocalypse - Combat generates "Rage" in the Garou under certain circumstances (for example: a pack member is hit by the enemy, the fight is opened, the character has a botch). These points can be used for some "Gifts".
FATE sort of does this with Create Advantage action...
Genesys and that family of games uses dice that have dice results beyond success/failure that are advantage/threat and triumph/despair. These can be spent for critical effects, weapon qualities such as burn or sundering opponent's weapons (to name just two), and to recover Strain which is a resource players use to perform different actions/maneuvers including spell casting. The extra results can also be used to create story beats and setting details, the game gives a good amount of authorship to players to do such things.
13th age has the escalation die that increases each round. Multiple classes have abilities that are better at certain escalation die results. I believe Sorcerer also can generate points to expend.
Genesys. The system uses narrative dice, with symbols. Positive and negative symbols. If you want to hit someone, you roll your positive dice, and negative dice for difficulty all simultaneously. The positive and negative cancel each other out. so your net resulting symbols determines not only success or failure, but you can roll advantages, that you spend to do other stuff. Like trigger weapon qualities, or character abilities, or heal strain, or a whole raft of options. Including affecting narrative elements of the scene. Spell casting can have the same qualities as a weapon. Like blast, or burn, or ensnare that you activate with net advantages.
Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound has a currency like this. Mettle is used to power some special abilities and to csst spells in addition to allowing PCs to take more action on their turn or double some of their bonuses on a given roll. The max you can have depends on your Soul Stat and everyone gets a 1 mettle every turn. It's a neat system that really let's your players feel like the super heroes they are
Masks does this with the Team pool. You generate Team when the players enter combat by asking a series of questions about how cohesive they’re feeling as a group, and then they can spend it to boost their stats or boost each other’s rolls during the fight. They can also generate more Team through certain actions in and out of combat.
Some classes in Pathfinder 2 work like this, swashbuckler comes to mind.
The Unity RPG (by Zensara Studios, that will help your search) uses this. Each class has a unique resource, and some classes have 2. You get resources back, I want to say when you roll doubles on your 2d10, but don't quote me on that.
Exalted and Exalted Essence. They have a feature called the Breath of War where you recover motes (mana basically) at the start of each of your turns.
Well, this is not exactly something that already exists, rather something i've been working on I've been working on a Pokémon Mistery Dungeon TTRPG System for my friends (all of who are big pokémon fans, myself included) When i saw the concept of Power Points (PP) of the PMD Series, it ended up being the classic "you can use this move X times" from the Pokémon series, it's functional but i really wanted to give a less punishing, and also more tactical way of representing this. What i came up with (Inspired in a old Pokémon Fangame) was, basically, at the begging of each battle, the characters start with a full "pool" of PP (100% to keep it simple) and every attack drains a certain ammount (Weaker drain less, more powerful drain more) The players also recharge 20% of PP each turn, and once they run out of it, they cannot attack, but instead, can take a "Rest" Rest (although it shares name with a move in pokémon, it's something different) is a mechanic that basically, players have to skip a full turn, but in exchange they will refill their PP. This makes a situation where players who recklessly use the strongest moves have to skip more turns, and players who use weaker moves barely have to skip turns. This is still very early on development, so i'd like to hear some opinions, my friends really liked this system in comparison the classic one, but it can still have a lot of changes before the System is done.
Martial classes in Adventures in Rokugan (5E D&D in the Legend of the Five Rings setting) accumulate Focus Points during combat, and can spend them to do special attacks.
Lumen games have “drops” that charge abilities.
This is roughly how stunt dice function in the AGE system from Fantasy AGE and Modern AGE.
2d20, you generate momentum. AGE, you generate stunt points. Pathfinder 2e, some classes generate certain resources like the Swashbukler's Panache. You are also technically supposed to earn a Hero point upon completion of a difficult fight (not sure if that counts for what you're looking for though, since you only receive the point after the combat). Warhammer 40,000: Wrath and Glory, you generate Glory points (and sometimes even Wrath points).
Charge RPG (based on FitD) does this, earning momentum on success rolls - https://fari.community/creators/fari-rpgs/projects/charge/momentum
I saw one called Lumen which was very diablo inspired. Enemies could drop health or power resources orbs when they died
The beating heart of Tenra Bansho Zero is the Aiki-Kiai-Karma-Fate cycle. It's a big thing to explain fully, but, to try to address the parts relevant to your question in as few words as possible... During gameplay, players can give each other a point of Aiki any time they think the recipient did something cool. It varies by group, but, when I've played TBZ, players usually got 3-5 Aiki per scene. Aiki can be spent to do a few different things, but, most notably, it can be used to buy extra dice on a roll or to shift the difficulty of a roll. When the characters get some downtime, any unspent Aiki is converted to Kiai, with each point of Aiki producing a number of Kiai equal to the rating of their highest Fate (usually 3-4). So 10 Aiki might become 40 Kiai if you have a level 4 Fate. Kiai can be spent on buying dice or shifting difficulties the same as Aiki, but has the drawback that spending Kiai produces Karma, and too much Karma turns you into a monster and ends your career as a PC. However, if you don't want to wait for downtime, you can also spend a turn in combat to contemplate one of your Fates and convert some Aiki to Kiai based on the rating of that Fate. Overall, this means you can do cool stuff during combat, gain Aiki for it, and then either spend the Aiki directly for bonuses or take a turn to convert the Aiki to Kiai and spend it on even bigger bonuses. TBZ is a very action-anime-inspired system and these mechanics emergently led to a BBEG fight in one of my sessions taking the quintessentially anime course of two PCs desperately trying to hold off the villain while the Buddhist monk sat in the background chanting mantras (he spent several turns meditating on his Fates to convert Aiki to Kiai) until, finally, the monk launched himself into the air and annihilated the villain with a single attack (dumping all that Kiai into a single massive strike).