Abilities that recharge duration question?

[keaton13]

I have a fire elemental familiar, they can use an attack that recharges every 1d4 rounds. If I roll a 1 is it usable next round or the round after that?

[Mysterious Stranger]

What is the attack and more important the wording on the attack. I don’t see anything in the standard elemental that has any kind of recovery on any time. A fire Mephit has a breath weapon that can be used every 4 rounds, but there is no roll to see how long before you can use it. None of the elemental creatures that can be familiars I am aware of have any abilities with a variable recovery time.

[keaton13]

It's the elemental familiar archetype, under the elemental manifestation ability.

Here is the wording:
A fire familiar can spit a globule of fire as a ranged touch attack once every 1d4 rounds; this attack has a range of 30 feet and deals 1d4 fire damage for every 3 character levels the master has.

[AwesomenessDog]

If your used the action on your turn, e.g. not as a ready or something else that can give an action off turn, then the counter starts ticking on that turn, meaning 1 round later will be the start of your next turn, thus meaning a 1 on the d4 rounds recharge is usable next turn.

[Taja the Barbarian]

keaton13 wrote:

It's the elemental familiar archetype, under the elemental manifestation ability.

Here is the wording:
A fire familiar can spit a globule of fire as a ranged touch attack once every 1d4 rounds; this attack has a range of 30 feet and deals 1d4 fire damage for every 3 character levels the master has.

If you just replace the '1d4 rounds' with your roll result of '1 round' you get 'a ranged touch attack once every 1 round' so if you use the ability and roll a '1' for the recharge, you can use it again the next round.