Swift spell as Standard Action?

[Dracorat]

 

[Artoomis]

Hmm? I can already take a Swift action, a Move action, and a Standard action in a round; a Swift action allowing a third action in a round seems to be exactly the intent...?

-Hyp.

You misunderstand.

A swift action lets you take a second action in a round OTHER THAN A MOVE ACTION. For spells, it lets you cast a second spell.

All I wanted was to let soemonw cast a Swift spell as a Standard Action.

Rules say no, common sense says yes. Rules won. Character died He is now know as "thrice-martyred."

Still dead, mind you, but probably will rise again this Thursday. Probably.

He's the victim of a couple of bad decisions and a couple of bad die rolls. On the other hand, hopefully the artifact that cost him -2 Charisma will be able to be detached because of death, so something good came come of all this.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Rules say no, common sense says yes.

Common sense quite happily says to me that letting someone cast a spell with a casting time of a swift action as a swift action, and a spell with a casting time of a standard action as a standard action, works just fine.

I'm not sure how common sense says "Casting two spells which each require a swift action in one round, when only one swift action per round is allowed, is just fine"... but as they say, common sense isn't...

-Hyp.

 

[Infiniti2000]

I agree with Hyp. I don't see modifying the rule as sensical at all, common or not. A swift or quickened spell is exactly that. Modifying the casting time of a spell is nontrivial at best, and impossible in some cases. I don't see how ruling that it's suddenly possible for no other reason than player desire is part of common sense.

 

[Artoomis]

Common sense quite happily says to me that letting someone cast a spell with a casting time of a swift action as a swift action, and a spell with a casting time of a standard action as a standard action, works just fine.

I'm not sure how common sense says "Casting two spells which each require a swift action in one round, when only one swift action per round is allowed, is just fine"... but as they say, common sense isn't...

-Hyp.

A cast my Swift Action spell.

Okay now during my standard action I may cast another spell. I choose one that is has a "swift action" casting time to use up my standard action. Whoops: can't do that. Apparently it's TOO FAST.

Weird, eh?

Seems like from every perspective except the strict language of the rules, it would make sense. Still... not allowed.

Oh, well. C'est la morte (in this case ).

 

[Justin Bacon]

Are you really going to tell me it is unbalancing for a 9th level wizard to forfeit his standard action to cast an additional quickened magic missile, or quickened ray of enfeeblement, or any other quickened 1st level spell? He is already capable of casting a two 1st level spells per round and that is hardly overpowering.

Just to play devil's advocate: There is one important difference between casting two quickened spells in a round and casting a quickened spell and a non-quickened spell. Quickened spells don't provoke AoOs.

But, like I said, I'm playing devil's advocate. I think the avoidance of an AoO there is well-balanced by the +3 spell level adjustment from the Quicken Spell feat, so I still wouldn't have any problem allowing this at my table. (In fact, if I were to design a metamagic feat which allowed you to avoid AoOs without making a Concentration check, I'd probably only make it a +1 spell level adjustment.)

 

[Justin Bacon]

But why a Standard Action? I mean, if your rationale is "swapping a standart action for an action taking minor time" you might as well make it a Move Action. That also takes more time than a swift action. Why is swapping a Standard for a Swift okay, but not a Move for a Swift???

Because that significantly changes the balance of the game. Now you can cast a Swift spell, another Swift spell as a move action, and a third spell as standard action. That's three spells in a round where normally you're capped at casting no more than two.

They went to a great deal of effort in 3.5 to prevent spellcasters from casting three spells (it was the primary reason for the nerfing of Haste).

Going from allowing two spells per round to allowing two spells per round (with the minor caveat noted in my previous post), on the other hand, is an essentially irrelevant alteration in terms of game balance.

This isn't difficult to understand and has been explained to you multiple times now.

 

[Justin Bacon]

Reason also says a Swift Action takes no longer than pulling out an arrow during a full attack or dropping your sword or the myriad of other Free Actions that exist. Swift Actions take almost no time at all. Reason tells me that if I can drop two weapons and draw two more with Quickdraw and still take a Full Attack, there's absolutely no way a Swift spell can take the place of a Standard Action.

That makes no sense. It's like saying that a character can't use their move action to walk 15 feet if they have a speed of 30 feet. Or claiming that it doesn't make any sense that drawing a weapon should take a full move action all by itself, since it can also be done while moving.

The thing I don't understand about your position, is the question of how can casting a swift action spell (which takes almost no time to cast) prevent someone from taking a standard action?

How can aswift action spell (which takes almost no time to cast) prevent someone from casting another swift action spell?

 

[Justin Bacon]

It would be much easier and simpler to houserule, "Swift action no longer exist. Everything that was a swift action is now a free action, but I reserve the right as a DM to enforce a limit on the reasonable number of free actions you can take in a round."

You counsider making an ad hoc ruling every time a free action comes up to be "simpler" than having a mechanic that can be described in two sentences which handles it precisely and accurately every single time?

Huh. That's not a definition of "simpler" that I understand.

The whole reason for creating swift actions was to create an elegant mechanical solution so that we wouldn't have a plethora of "special case" free actions which didn't act like other free actions (either defined by the system or determined by DM fiat). And it's a solution that works.

 

[Infiniti2000]

This isn't difficult to understand and has been explained to you multiple times now.

But what is really being 'explained' multiple times has nothing to do with game balance. People advocating allowing this are doing it on two notes:

1. Game balance is not lost
2. It is 'common sense' that you can take longer to do any action

Perhaps #1 is true. But, it is #2 we are arguing. It makes even less sense to allow you to use up a standard action for a free/swift action spell and not a move action. Any 'common sense' used in restricting the time in the first place would tossed out the window to allow such a rule change. It is completely illogical to do what you desire.

And no one advocating allowing this rule has yet to adequately address the humungous inconsistency of "un"-quickening.