Can i willingly take more time to cast a spell?

[StreamOfTheSky]

This is more annoying than one may realize. For instance, a warblade who has initiated a counter prior to his current turn cannot refresh his maneuvers (unless he uses adaptive style) because the swift action he requires has already been used as an immediate action earlier on.

That is very annoying. However, the Warblade even w/ this houserule would still have no options. The Warblade needs a swift + standard or swift + melee attack. If he's using his standard action for the swift, the first is already out the window. While I'm sure with help from a caster or some kind of tactician class (marshal variant I think?) he can find a way to get a free action (or, more oddly, move action) attack, but it would be a difficult and situational thing to set up.

It would be nice to be able to use a counter and then a boost the next round, and I don't see why it'd be that broken. Stance of Alacrity would still be useful -- could do a counter, a boost, and one more of either each round, or just counter + boost without losing your standard action like everyone else who wants to do that would.

And yes, it was established by like post 3 that this isn't allowed by RAW. Everyone in favor of it has said they think it's ok to allow (houserule), not that it is RAW.

 

[Jhaelen]

Well, doesn't it boil down to the question if there are any situations where it would be more effective to use a swift action instead of a standard action?

I.e. are there swift spells or powers that are (situationally) better than spells or powers requiring a standard action available at the same level?

The OP already described a situation where that seemed to be the case.

I believe that allowing this will not necessarily result in being broken as in 'too powerful'. But it will be broken as in 'too easy' to get out of danger. Losing a standard action in a combat is pretty bad, but you won't care if you're trying to disengage safely, i.e. not continue fighting.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Assuming that in general this did make it easier to escape danger, wouldn't most consider that a good thing? The players might avert getting killed or even a TPK; NPC villains you'd like to be recurring have an easier time getting away... Short of teleport type magic or significantly greater speed, often times it is rather difficult to escape from combat IME.

 

[Shin Okada]

In addition to teleporting spells, there are many low-level defensive spells added in supplements, such as Energy Aegis, Deflect, Avoid Planar Effects and such. Allowing it to cast twice in a round may not make those spells overtly powerful, but more versatile than they are intended to be.

 

[irdeggman]

Well, doesn't it boil down to the question if there are any situations where it would be more effective to use a swift action instead of a standard action?

I.e. are there swift spells or powers that are (situationally) better than spells or powers requiring a standard action available at the same level?

The OP already described a situation where that seemed to be the case.

Actually the OP described a situation where he wanted to use 2 swift spells in a single round.

He could have chosen to use one to "for survival" and instead used a different one but then wanted to use the "survival" one.

I don't see where this type of player decision should actually be "rewarded".

 

[Runestar]

That is very annoying. However, the Warblade even w/ this houserule would still have no options. The Warblade needs a swift + standard or swift + melee attack. If he's using his standard action for the swift, the first is already out the window. While I'm sure with help from a caster or some kind of tactician class (marshal variant I think?) he can find a way to get a free action (or, more oddly, move action) attack, but it would be a difficult and situational thing to set up.

Actually, I meant that it was times like this that I wished ToB had gone the way of 4e and allowed you to trade down a move action for an extra swift action (would probably need a lot of caveats). It got so frustrating at times (the scarcity of swift actions) that I cannot help but wonder if this was really intentional or some sort of design oversight by the designers.