A suboptimal choice and one only available at high levels (as compared to this 5e rogue ability available at 2nd level). And some people still complained about it.
There couldn't have been too many complaints about it, since both that mechanic and daily barbarian powers survived the Pathfinder playtest feedback. The survival of those mechanics along with the survival of confirming rolls for criticals prove that Pathfinder fans and me are very different animals.
Your case appears to be that the people who disliked 4e martial dailies are hypocritical because they are essentially the same as mechanics that existed in prior editions, which is absurd.
Equally absurd is your insistence that barbarians weren't a common class, or that daily powers for martial characters haven't been with us for a long time. Look, 4e took it to a degree greater than any other edition with the AEDU system, but let's not sanitize the past here. 4e is mostly a system that takes 3e to its logical conclusion rather than something as revolutionary as people think it is.
Now I'll agree that daily powers are poblematic, but they are generally problematic because when you fail, your moment of potential glory doesn't come up again for anywhere from a week to a month. So essentially there is a lot of build up, but potentially no payoff. The 3e paladin was the worst offender, as he waited to unleash his smite against powerful evil, failed more often than not because of the high defenses of the boss monster, and watched the fighter do the damage every round that he had to save his dailies for.
That's why Gygax knew what he was doing when he had magic spells work without an attack roll. Of course, he proved he didn't know what he was doing by allowing some of those spells to fail due to save or die. Often the monster succeeded and your killer spell just fizzled. King Evoker on the other hand, did 10d6-15d6 damage, which was usually a guaranteed kill for the monster anyway. With 3e's save for half damage it got a little better, but Evoker was still far and away the optimal wizard choice. After all, it isn't like a failed save in a save or die spell still took away half the creature's hp,
Fatigue mechanics are great. Daily powers, which place a starkly unreasonable limit on one ability while leaving all the character's other capabilities unaffected, are not representing adrenaline, energy, fatigue, or anything else in those action movies. They are representing the coyote chasing the roadrunner off a ledge, and realizing that he is out of movement-related powers a little too late.
I think we can all agree that a fatigue mechanic would be better than daily martial powers. I think where we all disagree is whether daily martial powers are blasphemy, and when they are blasphemy.
I am all for abilities that meaningfully capture this idea, such as a legitimate fatigue mechanic, or action points, which represent that superhuman effort but have the virtue of not being time-limited resources and being optional for people who don't like them.
There are specific spells that can be unbalancing. Lots of them. This does not mean that "spells" are inherently unbalancing, or that the frequency of use is a balancing tool.
The issue with these kinds of spells is twofold. First, non-spellcasters should have similarly powerful abilities (i.e. disabling or killing someone with one roll), but the health system is too forgiving in this regard. Second, the spells have no real limits other than the daily restriction. Both are readily fixable, though I haven't exactly seen 5e nail it in this regard.
Yes, many epic heroes have had quasi-superpowers. You know what they didn't have? Occasions where they tried to use them, but couldn't because they had already done something similar that day. Those characters are so superhuman precisely because they
never stop coming. In other words, I'm not just talking about the daily aspect being unrealistic, I'm talking about it being anti-dramatic and anti-fun.[/QUOTE]