I feel the "cooldown meter" is not something that an actual real-life dragonborn would worry about lol. It is just what the game developers placed into the game mechanics to limit people Fus Ro Dah'ing everything. Every try a 100% shout cooldown reduction build? It is ridiculous.
The idea behind shouts is not shouting, it is The Way of the Voice, meaning the dragonborn is not straining him/herself by using the dragon language to cause effects.
You really want to be able to just run around shouting non-stop? Lol.
Strength of the shout? In terms of effect, sure some shouts are seemingly "more powerful" than others in some contexts, but in the actual execution of each shout I would imagine they take the same amount of effort to perform, just using specific words would produce a different effect.
Very interasting. I like the idea and if anything the Dragonborn may lose the ability to speak like the Greybeards and can not speak at all. Or lose control of the Voice and it goes crazy.
If he did lose it he would have to go back to his original fighting style and postable life style.
But how would it it take more out of you? You don't have to shout the words just speak them, its the words that amplify the sound. And it can't be the power of the shouts for the fact what do you think is more powerful, shouting people off their feet or clearing the skies of rain, snow, or lightning (heck, I even usede it on solstheim and it looked a little better) and if your choice was clear skies, why is its cooldown so much shorter? Obviously its much more powerful just not as useful, realistically its really useful, but in game no. So if unrelenting force would take more out of you (longer cooldown), yet does less than clear skies, explain this.