After perusing Unearthed Arcana for my Greyhawk campaign I'm going to start tomorrow, something struck me as I read through several sections. The section on recharging magic, spell points, weapon groups, action points (which can be used to activate limited per day class features) and other "rules variants" seem a lot like I'm hearing about.
Thoughts? Speculation? For reference, I'll point out the sections that got my brain working:
Action Points, p. 122
Spell Points, p. 153
Recharge Magic, p. 157
Players Roll All the Dice, p. 133 (This section got my attention in light of the poison damage dealio that came up.)
Conveniently, these variant rules are in the SRD, so I've linked them for y'all.
I'm not sure if this is relevant or not, but given that You linked ot the players roll everthing section I thought I'd comment...
For the past few sessions I've been experimenting with the static saving-throws as seen in Star Wars Saga Edition. Initially, I thought that the idea of having the attacker always be the one to "make the roll" would be a good thing. (I'm speaking of spellcasters making a roll to set the save DC here.)
Now it could be a matter of what the players are "used to" but while my players like being able to roll a d20 and add their Int/Wis/Cha bonus when they cast a spell, they feel kind of cheated when I do the same for enemy spellcasters who are attacking them. As such, I think that I'm going to amend the SWSE save rules [that I borrowed] so that "named" characters aways get to roll their own save if they so choose. It doesn't have quite the speediness of the defender always [effectively] taking 10, but in some instances it's worth it.
As for Recharge Magic, I've been using this for the past year and based off of the specific recharge times for lots of the buffs, I can certainly see where this line of thinking has influenced [what I know of] 4th Edition. IMO, that's a good thing as recharge has worked quite well for my group. Granted, it decreases the sheer amount of firepower a caster can unleash over a short period, but in lengthy battles and especially dungeon settings, it really helps to keep the damage and healing casters useful. IMO, something that could bridge the lack of short-term firepower and long-term usefulness would be the grail of what WotC is attempting to find here. Based on past experience, I'd guess that some form of recharging spell-points would be the key. Or at least that's what I was about to start researching/developing before I heard the 4E announcement anyway...
Hope 4E makes liberal use of Unearthed Arcana, which is a great resource.