Corinth said:
Use of Cooldowns, measured in rounds (combat-applicable) or minutes (non-combat), is better. "At-will" abilities have no cooldown. Per-encounter abilities get cooldowns that vary by this or that criteria. Greater abilities have longer cooldowns. Reagents may or may not be required.
Ugh, no. This is the exact thing they are trying to avoid:
Player: "I activate Blades of Fury."
DM: "Didn't you use that like 2 rounds ago?"
Player: "No, it was 4 rounds ago, it has a recharge of 4 rounds."
DM: "No, I distinctly remember you using Blades of Fury the same round the enemy used his Fire Attack. That was two rounds ago according to my notes."
Player: "Yeah, that was the same round, but I've been keeping track, it's been 4 rounds since then."
DM: "My notes say otherwise. Sorry, you can't use it yet."
Player: "Fine, I activate Blades of Power. I KNOW I used that one first round and it's been 5 rounds of combat."
DM: "It's been 4 rounds of combat. I've been keeping track. You can't use it."
Player: "But it has a recharge of 3 rounds."
DM: "Does it? I thought it was 5. Let me look it up to be sure."
Then you get to the end of the combat and some powers have a recharge of 5 minutes or something and the group then gets into a combat after searching the room and new enemies come in.
Player: "Ok, I use Super All Powerful Strike!"
DM: "You can't, it has a recharge of 5 minutes."
Player: "Yeah, we searched the room after the last battle, that HAD to have taken at least 5 minutes."
DM: "Well, you were in the MIDDLE of searching the room when the new enemies came in. It was about 4 minutes."
Player: "Come on, you said we found all that loot and we put it in our portable hole, we couldn't have done that in 4 minutes."
DM: "Ok, you're probably right, go ahead and activate it."
Every time we have to track durations or recharge times this type of conversation comes up yet again. People rushing from room to room before buffs wear off. People waiting around in rooms until powers come back. It's all pretty lame.
And the metagame reason to not allow players to use the same power twice is to make combat more interesting and encourage a different action each round. If the recharge is set too small or there is a recharge method then people will simply activate their best power as many times as they can.
I think a system where you get back all of your powers at the beginning of every encounter no matter how much time has passed is a good one. And, say, 5 minutes out of combat.