I've always wanted shouts in Skyrim to have an independent cool-down (like powers in Mass Effect 1 for example) instead of the global system currently in place. I mean I want to role-play a true dragonborn/voice master, but the global cool-down pretty much prevents me from doing so.

So here's what I came up with (it has probably been done before, I didn't look). The third word of every shout comes with a 1 second cool-down (might change that to 5, just for the sake of it), thus bypassing the cool-downs of the first 2 words, enabling me to instantly shout again, provided I use all three words of the shout. Call of Valor, Call Dragon and Storm Call are treated as powers so can only be used once a day, and each word has a 5 second cool-down.

Pros: I do believe my approach to be balanced, as you need the three words (and three souls) to make it work.

Con: it's rather end-game oriented, and the first two words might not be as appealing as before.

I'm not a code/scripting guru and my knowledge of the creation kit is very limited (I pretty much only play with numbers and whatnot) so I don't know if this is safe: can I break some scripts/quests with such short cool-downs?

Thoughts?

A lot of mods out there played with the cooldown, so I think you are fine.

And as I have said, a lot of mods have this part covered, but you are still free to publish your version of it.

If you can make every shout having its own cooldown, though, that would be something else and I would very much like to use it.