Using Recharge Magic

[Rolzup]

As I find myself leaning more and more towards the "encounter based" way of thinking, I've been taking another look at the Recharge Magic variant from Unearthed Arcana. In theory, I really like it. In practice, though, things could be a very different story.

Has anyone hereabout employed this variant? How does it interact with the Warlock? Does recharge make the poor 'lock entirely redundant?

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I've used it in the process of experimenting with different magic systems. Overall I liked the idea because it meant I could keep players in the fight and hit them with repeated threats without forcing frequent rests.

That said
1. The dice roll in the recharge time just slows things down and is best changed to a static recharge time for each spell level.
2. Spells with non-standard recharge times are not necessarily all well considered and make it harder to remember which spells are available to cast at any one time. Some may require adjusting the recharge time. If you're going to keep them print out a cheat sheet of them for players and DM to help keep things straight. Otherwise you can make all spells standard recharge time though that does increase power level.
3. It is a rather large power increase and you can generally feel free to use higher CR encounters. Since moving to per-encounter casting I generally average +2-4CR with major encounters in the +6-9CR range, though that's as much due to good tactics and teamwork as the power increase.