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You're not doing your players any favors by making the game less fun.I disagree that it will make the game less fun. Quite the opposite actually.
It'll be like the temporary URF game mode in League of Legends. The players might have fun at first, but eventually the game will get repetitive and dull as most of the mechanics that gave the game depth won't work.
I'm baffled, honestly. You're totally entitled to your opinion and have the right to do whatever you want in your campaign. However, I never understand why people create a thread that asks "Will this break the game?" and then disagree when the majority of the responses explain "Yes, it will." Why ask the community for their opinion whether or not you should do something when you already made an adamant decision to do it anyway?
I'm not familiar with the Inquisitor. Can I get an example on how he's problematic?
Inqusitor has two limited combat buffs built into the class. The first is "judgment" which can be used Int((Level + 2) / 3) times per day and lasts the entire combat. The consensus best judgment is "Justice" which gives you 1 + INT(Level/5) to all of your attack rolls. This basically takes you from 3/4 BAB to full BAB, which is nice because you get a pile of skills and 6 level spellcasting.
At 8th level and 16th level you get two and three respectively judgment effects whenever you use your judgment; good choices are destruction and protection. Destruction will give you 1 + INT(Level/3) to all of your damage rolls and Protection will give you 1+ INT(Level/5) to your AC.
Making every ability limited to per combat not per day means you can use judgment all day, which makes you significantly more powerful (and removes the question of "whether this fight is worth it".
But more troubling is the bane ability, which lets you apply Bane to your weapon for a number of rounds per day equal to your class level. This is a really powerful buff, since it's +2 to hit and +2+2d6 to damage. But if you can only use it 5 rounds a day, you have to save it for important rounds in important fights. If you can use it 5 rounds a fight, that's basically the entire fight.
So letting an inquisitor use judgment and bane constantly basically makes them a 6 level caster, with full BAB and 6+INT skills/level who hits for double damage in melee.
I started out pondering how your houserule would affect sorcerers, which is the class in my heart. And then I remembered rods. In the games I've played, very few encounters go for 4+ rounds. So if you let your houserule extend to gear, you'd have essentially unlimited-use metamagic rods. That IMHO could easily be game-breaking. Easily. And that started me thinking about how many other fights end in 1 or 2 rounds, and how a 2x/day ability extended to 2x/encounter would turn into an unlimited-use ability many days of the week. Or as Debnor here has reminded me, a magus can take arcana to apply metamagic feats to spells 1/day. If you want a free Maximized or Quickened spell every combat, well, you'll get one with your rule. That certainly will end more fights in one round! I don't remember details of purely martial classes at all, despite having played one or two, but I'm guessing that turning martial 1x to 3x/day abilities into what would often amount to unlimited-use abilities would be similarly overly-powerful.
OTOH, tracking number of uses is annoying. Playing a sorcerer, I deal with it because I'm also tracking the number of spells/level I use. (I create a sheet with check-off boxes for everything.) But I can imagine that it's a pain for a lot of players. A 1x or even 3x/day ability, you can remember. After that, relying on memory gets fuzzier.
So I think you should keep the low times per day abilities as is. 1x to 3x instances per day abilities should remain untouched. And then, if you want to change the rest, just lift the lid off. Admit that you're going to at-will usage for abilities with 4+ uses/day, that few enough fights will go more than 4 rounds (especially with this houserule) that it's not worth the hassle of counting uses.
For parties with a channeler, this would amount to unlimited healing, yes. The channeler won't need to cast Cure spells (especially if they take the Selective Channeling feat). Now that will free them up to do more interesting things, which the player might welcome. Maybe it's a good idea, maybe it isn't. Debnor has also reminded me that his 5th-level bard ran out of 17 bardic performance rounds once because it took that long to draw the boss out of a camp away from his minions; the bard didn't have any rounds left for the actual fight. Given your houserule, which presumably would refresh his rounds immediately before the fight, he'd be so close to using his abilities at will that you really might as well cut out the bookkeeping.
My point is, admit that you're making such abilities use-at-will -- or don't make the change.
My twist on your proposed houserule would indeed help to adjudicate out-of-combat abilities, like bardic ones. The ability to take 20 on a Knowledge check would remain at 1-3 times/day, while bardic performance, which does have out-of-combat uses, would change to unlimited. Debnor has prompted me with one example of the latter -- his bard has a masterpiece that gives the party +10 speed for an hour per bardic performance round.
I'm not advocating the rule I'm proposing (1-3x/day stays the same; more frequent abilities go to at-will). I certainly don't want to adopt it myself. I'm just trying to help you implement what you want in a fashion you hopefully can live with easier. And I definitely think you won't like the consequences of letting 1x to 3x/day abilities become x/encounter ones.
{Edited out of dissatisfaction with my paragraphing.}
I don't see anything about Int having any influence on them),
I meant INT() the "round down to the nearest integer" function, not intelligence.
You could adopt the 5e method which I think is a good compromise. Add the "short rest mechanic" which allows you to recover some abilities with a short rest. I believe it's a 4 hour 'break' which allows them to do within a dungeon but also can be interruptible if the GM wants to.
You may not have the book OP - but may I recommend getting Pathfinder Unchained? The PDF is only 10 bucks.
The system you are looking for is called Stamina - it is a per-encounter type ability that applies to tons of feats and has options for how to let players take it as a feat (and or give it free to melee characters). I have a feeling that system would be more fun and less of a headache for you overall.
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What are you asking for?If the houserule will break anything too much.
Yes.
It fundamentally breaks the entire rules system by making a functional full rest between each encounter.
All daily resources should refresh if you refresh per day resources for one class, all should refresh.
I feel like probably some stuff should refresh after every encounter (or like, after a brief rest) but some things should only refresh after a full rest is a reasonable way to go about it.
What I'm wondering though, is that given that this is the OP's idea, what abilities specifically do they feel don't get to get used often enough? Obviously a 5rd level barbarian with a 16 con doesn't need to rage for 15 rounds per combat, and a 5th level alchemist with 16 int will probably lay waste to everything bombable in a given fight before they work their way through 8 bombs.
So are there any "per day" powers that really ought to be made much more available?
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I don't know what the argument with TOZ is try to prove. functionally rest before every encounter is Identical mechanics wise to all abilities turning into a per encounter its only Flavor wise that is the difference basically whether you say the next day or an hour later.
I personally have set encounters up like that keeping in mind how many they were likely to do in a day. I've done one bosses battle where the party is at full and made them need to be to survive and I've done the slow drain method. and every variation in between. The entire D&D system and PF have been based on resource management so its only natural that changing something as fundamental as that would have a large effect. It might be fun for your group. Try it and let us know.
I don't see a reason to ask opinions and then argue with them however that is silly. :P