So I am looking at spells for my ranger and I notice many spells that seems to have a casting time that basically makes them useless.
for example... the spell Protective Spirit seems to be a reactive spell one would use when trying to use a bow or spells in combat or any one attempting to run through a gambit of attacks of opportunity.
but the fact that the spell takes a standard action to cast (kind of a long time in game terms) and the fact that if your already over run its kind of useless as the enemy will get attacks of opportunity as you cast the spell trying to protect yourself from attacks of opportunity, makes me feel that this is a spell that SHOULD be a swift action spell. I mean its only rounds per level.
so it made me wonder if other people think that some casting times make other spells much less useless.
while we are on the subject do you think that there should be a different base casting time for spells.
for example at this time the default to cast a spell is STANDARD and things are modified from there.
but what if that remained the case with offensive spells like fireball. but for defensive spells it were changed to something like
spells with a duration of x rounds are a swift action to cast
x minutes are a standard action to cast
x 10 minute blocks are a full round or a minute to cast
x hours are 10 mins to cast.
I plan to use this as a house rule and baseline with exceptions made on a case by case basis.
any opinion on why this may or may not be a good idea?