Abilities don't degrade over time and also offer up much more powerful
attacks over your fists, but they've got their own catch; each time one is used you stick a marker on it to track its cooldown, rendering it unusable until enough rounds have passed.
Better yet unused weapons can be fed into your axe, sword or
fist of choice to increase its power, with special abilities also making the jump
over so that you might wind up with a Thermal Sword that increases
attack power or even lets your character hoover up nearby items.