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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Deadguy" data-source="post: 2348692" data-attributes="member: 2480">Well, the only real rules change has been to add Swift and Immediate actions. Everything else has been refinement of presentation (though I admit that refining Skills usage borders on a rules change). And these new actions are just an attempt to codify what has otherwise been included in the individual descriptions of powers and spells. Take, as the classic example, the Featherfall spell. Its casting time is a free action, but it isn't really a free action as generally described, since it can be used outside of your own turn. Now that's a nice effect - and necessary for the spell to have a 'useful' effect - but it has to be written specially for that spell, and the same again for any other spell or ability that ought to be usable the same way. So instead we create the 'Immediate' action, describe that once, and then say 'Casting Time: 1 Immediate action'.The Swift action just codifies that Free Action which you can only take one of in a round. Rather than having each time to say, as with Quickened spells, that it's a free action, but you can use it only once per round, instead you can say 'Swift action'. This also handles the interactions betweeen different abilities that are all 'use as a free action, but only once per round'. The latter needs to say whether or not the actions of different types can be combined, whilst it is built into the definition of Swift actions.As Complete Adventurer demonstrates, codifying this requirement allows you yo open up and create new powers and spells which use this tool. It's not that they couldn't be written without the Swift/Immediate action, but it does make it clearer, by putting a rules effect into general rules, rather than buried in a power or spell description. Are these changes essential? Of course not - we got along without them okay. It's just that with them, I can create a game with more options, for just a little work.I think that Wizards (and Paizo) have taken a very fair line with the Swift and Immediate actions. Whenever the make use of something outside the core rules in a supplement, they've reprinted the underlying rule in a sidebar. No need to buy another book beyoind that supplement - they've given it to you gratis. Short of never using anything at all from the supplements, that's the fairest way to make use of supplemental material.Obviously for you it's a distraction. But for me, it's a fair attempt by the company to extend its game without printing a whole new rules set. You never [/i]need[/i] to add these refinements, but I'd rather the option to do so existed than to say 'carved in stone until the next edition'.</blockquote>

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