The way they've been putting dragonshouts across is a core gameplay element, and as such, i honestly think the cooldown periods will be generally short. The reason for this (i hope) is because dragons are extremely hard to kill. Makes sense, only the Dovakhiin can kill dragons, because only he has the ability to use dragonshouts as potently as he can.

Obviously, this begs the question, "Won't i be able to completely own non-dragons?"

Probably. But let's remember, it would be a bit weird if we were dragon slayers one day, and got [censored] by stupid bandits the next.

It is possible that one would have to slay dragons or find something similar to soul gems to get energy to use dragon shouts. Just a thought.

Ok I agree with that, also I would maybe try to consider implementation as one other poster said here that you could use one shout per battle...or that may be too much.

I agree as well that ME system works fine, but using others may end up as well by ending the battle with just using 5 dragon shouts... you know what I mean?!

Dragon Shout are unsurprisingly your primary method of killing dragons. It's what they're there for.

Im quite sure that they said their was a 30 seconds cool down time

I'd quite like a 3 minute cooldown on individual Dragon Shouts, but with a 30 second global cooldown to prevent over abuse of shouts.
As you progress in the game and get more Dragon Shouts you will become even more powerful in longer battles with the shouts in your "rotation"

Maybe it's just the roleplayer in me, but I'd imagine forcing wordmagic out of my lungs and throat would be pretty taxing.

I mean, I just think back to the Mouth of Sauron that Aragorn faced at the black gate in Return of the King (extended edition). His lips were blackened and cracked because the idea was that he had corrupted his mouth by speaking so many evil spells in the language of Mordor.

I imagine cooldowns are in place, it's not too much of a stretch to assume that using dragonshouts is tiring and thus you can't do it that often while still conserving energy.

Dragons are boss enemies, but they are only TES bosses, probably harder than most Oblivion bosses, think supermutant overlords or similar in broken steel as a difficulty. They can easy kill you but are also quite killable, because they hunt you they can not be to strong else lots of badly equipped or levelled players would end up in a "you die now, hope you have a previous save" situation then caught in the open by a dragon.
Dragon will be level or location scaled as you can run into them thought the game.

I don't know why the developers don't just answer this question for us now....surely they are reading these boards, I can't imagine it's giving away too much to just tell us the answer to this question.

maybe the closer you are to a dragon, the faster you're shouts recharge. This way you can fight a dragon and rely heavily on the shouts, while at the same time you ensure that you don't abuse it's power outside of dragon battles. Maybe it takes a while day for it to recharge when you are 10 miles from a dragon, but when the dragon is right on top of you- it only takes 30 seconds or so to recharge.

Um... no? It was the very first offensive thing he did. You're gonna be fighting a lot of dragons; it's what you're meant for. You think because a dragon struck you once and then breathed fire at you, you're in a last resort situation? He used it because it's a useful tool. We don't even know what that one did. The cool down for any specific shout shouldn't be more than 5 - 10 minutes. For some it should even be as low as 10 - 30 seconds. If it's once per day, then you'll have people who enjoy the dragon shouts pissed off that they can't reuse them, and they'll be resting for 24 hours after every single combat. That's just annoying, immersion-breaking and will disrupt the flow of the game. Greater Powers had their purpose, and once a day kind of made sense. Dragon Shouts, however, should be able to be used many times a day. Yes, all of them.


No...

I'd ask DCDeacon but Twitter is being weird right now.

Edit: Guess it was just Twitter on Google Chrome, I asked Pete. and will post if I get a response.

Pete confirmed a cooldown, he just hasn't said what it will be yet.

http://twitter.com/#!/DCDeacon

Killing dragons just to use shouts turns dragons into a glorified ammo system. No thanks.

the length of timme you have the dragon.

Thanks for the creative response..

being english .. i thinked i've trained to do so for long enough to knock down white-gold tower