essentialy, instead of the current set up of each power getting one use per encounter/day, you get a small collection of "use slots" that you spend to use powers. you get two diffrent pools, one for encounter powers and one for daily. you gain a number of use slots for each catagory equal to the number of powers you have. so if i have 3 encounter powers, i get 3 encounter use slots. you spend a use slot to activate a power, and may do so in any combination you desire. you can use the same power 3 times, or mix it up and use several diffrent ones as the situation demands. you regain 1 encounter use slot per 5 minute rest, and all of your daily slots from an extended rest.
this makes PC's slightly more powerful, as they will be able to use they're most ideal powers for a given situation multiple times. to balance this you could gives monsters the same ability. gving then a number of use slots equal to the number of powers they possess not counting at-wills) OR you couldsimply expand the range that they're powers recharge at. if a amonster power recharges on a roll of 6, it not recharges on a roll of 5 and 6. and so on.
the reaosn for this is twofold. A) i really hated vancian casting and am happy to see it go. i'd like to remove even this simblance of it from my game if possable. B) it makes more sense. the use rules governing powers are supposed to simulate the expenditure of effort it takes to perform a given act. it doesnt make much sense that you'd be too tired to use a power a second time in an encounter/day, but not to tired to use another power that required the sameemount of effort.
now, the reason im bothering to post it here is that, while this looksokay to me, i may not be seeing a potential game-breaking loophole here. so i ask if anyone sees a problem with this, and maybe some advice on how to fix it?
you regain 1 encounter use slot per 5 minute rest, and all of your daily slots from an extended rest.
As long as you are aware that this increases a PC's potential power (using a higher level encounter/daily multiple times for instance), and could also make them less healthy (by granting a similar ability to enemies), and your own player agree to play under those rules, more power to you.
However, I will note that the quoted passage is problematic. You normally regain ALL your encounter powers during a short rest. This is a major aspect of balance. Consider, the enemies your characters face are almost always at full ability. So, after a couple encounters using the quoted house-rule, your characters would probably only have a single encounter power instead of the full number they should have.
Also, under this system, you'd need to decide how you are going to change utility powers. They come in at-will, encounter, and daily types. Do you add the encounter-utility 'slots' to the encounter-attack 'slots'? The daily-utility 'slots' to the daily-attack 'slots'? Do you have two sets of encounter/daily slots; one for attack powers and one for utility powers?
You probably need to consider these questions with this kind of house rule.
Also the way it translates into monsters is very akward and unwieldly, some monsters have encounter powers that only activate when bloodied so that could present a problem if you decide to blow on encounter powers and are stuck without one to use on your bloodied one. Also increasing recharge is powering up your monsters as well (especially since most recharges are left in the hand of solo monsters)
Both player and monster gain power but it isn't an even run, polayers will have an easy time with nonsolos while the solos will triumph with their ever recharging powers.