As a rule of thumb, if you can see a powergamer or rules lawyer abusing it, don't allow it.

*Is confused* If I can relate it to something I understand...In Fire emblem, there are brave weapons that let you hit twice in one turn, but they aren't as powerful as the silver sword, which is the best average weapon in the game. The silver sword has more Might, while the brave weapon always lets you hit twice. If the brave weapon hits twice though, it is always better than the silver sword. Mages and every class have their own brave weapon, so he can't make it so magic users can't take advantage of the one turn limit. That just makes spell casters less effective :(

My DM was convinced that the downgrade rule was fair. I abused this to its fullest in a Wrath of the Righteous campaign as an Archmage transmuter, casting three spells per turn, two of which required two saves each. It ground the gameplay to a halt whenever there were multiple enemies, and allowed me to win initiative and solo entire encounters to the point that the rest of the party was just cleanup crew (ie, walk in, Quickened Confusion, Quickened Slow, and Feeblemind the enemy caster, then just sit back and watch). I made -him- rage-quit the campaign by level 9.

Ultimately it depends on your players and what they intend to do, but if there's even one "me" in the group, DO NOT do it.

This is why I was trying to convince him not to use it. That rule makes it way to easy to abuse. And my group has 3 people who like to abuse the system.

If there's a caster, point out to him that Quicken Spell will triple his spell output as early as level 9. And that's not even getting inventive.

Other DM is keeping the 1 swift spell per turn rule in place for casters, though that can raise the question of fairness. That is, "Why should the 1/turn rule be relaxed for everyone else but not for casters? That's not fair. That's nerfing my wizard. etc, etc, etc."

Well, Quicken Spell is somewhat of a mitigating factor, in that it's +4 level adjustment, so it's only crappy spells with poor DC's. For me it was the worst thing because Arcane Surge is "Swift cast any spell you have prepared, they save twice and take the lower result". So my spell output was insane AND the DC's were high. It might get hairy later on with quicken metamagic rods, but most campaigns never get far enough for those to be affordable. Casters are probably the safest thing to give it to. Contrast with say a Monk, who if near death could pop all three of his allowed swifts to boost his AC by 12 for the turn to tank like a motherfucker / not die. Or a Paladin, who could declare smite evil and then also activate Litany of Righteousness and make his only swing of the turn do quadruple smite damage, octuple on a critical.

Your answers are at:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemasteri.....ions-In-Combat

In Pathfinder, you cannot downgrade standards or moves into swifts. You get a maximum of 1 swift action when it is your action in the turn.

Your description above confuses swift and immediate actions. Swift actions are quick dinky things, like activating a magic item, that you do only on your turn.
Immediate actions are quick dinky things that you can do any time, even on someone else's turn, like casting Feather Fall (because if you couldn't cast Feather Fall on someone else's turn you'd always hit bottom before you can cast).

It is different in D&D 3.5, but the above is for Pathfinder.

I know what the default rules are, how swift actions are only 1/per turn.

The issue here is that the DM wants to allow PC's to swap out Move and Standard actions for additional swift actions, that is, up to 3, per turn.

And not all swift actions are 'dinky.' The Monk of Four Winds can use a swift action, pay 6 Ki points, and get 3 standard actions for his turn. And without the 1/turn limit, a player can reasonably argue that he should be able to pay more points and spend more swift actions to gain additional standard actions.

A 1st level Greensting Magus can spend 2 swift actions to gain the Sneak Attack damage bonus of a 3rd level rogue.

I'm trying to show Other DM that since swift actions were never designed or intended to be used more than once per turn, allowing them to be causes a lot in the way of exploits.

Well then yes, there are zillions of exploits and it'll get worse as time goes on.

It won't be noticeable in levels 1-5.

But once you get to the metamagic rod of quickening for 35,000 gp, you're done. A wizard with that can, like mentioned above, toss three fireballs in the first round of combat, basically annihilating the first fight of the day. That's the most childishly simple exploit.

As characters, look at it the other way. What do you do if you face an enemy who can do that? You're going to all die before you get a chance to act. It's to your benefit as players not to allow it too; as anything you can do to the GM the GM can do back to you. :)

I sent the link to this journal in a shout to  reikonova. He's been getting heavily into Pathfinder recently. Hopefully he can help! :D

From the link Luagha posted, these appear to be the relevant sections:

Swift Actions

A swift action consumes a very small amount of time, but represents a larger expenditure of effort than a free action. You can perform one swift action per turn without affecting your ability to perform other actions. In that regard, a swift action is like a free action. You can, however, perform only one single swift action per turn, regardless of what other actions you take. You can take a swift action anytime you would normally be allowed to take a free action. Swift actions usually involve spellcasting, activating a feat, or the activation of magic items.

and...

Immediate Actions

Much like a swift action, an immediate action consumes a very small amount of time but represents a larger expenditure of effort and energy than a free action. However, unlike a swift action, an immediate action can be performed at any time—even if it's not your turn. Casting feather fall is an immediate action, since the spell can be cast at any time.

Using an immediate action on your turn is the same as using a swift action and counts as your swift action for that turn. You cannot use another immediate action or a swift action until after your next turn if you have used an immediate action when it is not currently your turn (effectively, using an immediate action before your turn is equivalent to using your swift action for the coming turn). You also cannot use an immediate action if you are flat-footed.

If the section about Immediate Actions were not present, I could see where your DM was coming from even if I didn't agree. The "one swift action per turn without affecting your ability to perform other actions COULD be seen as implying that, if you could somehow take multiple swift actions per turn, it WOULD affect your ability to perform other actions. I think your DM is taking the wrong interpretation of it, though; I would see it as "whether or not you take a swift action, all of your other actions remain as normal for that round." This interpretation seems to be supported by the Immediate Actions section, and that section is why I would say no, you shouldn't be able to "downgrade" other kinds of actions to swift actions. Immediate actions are off-turn OR on-turn swifts; they are the same resource, just one is more flexible in when it can be used (swift is ONLY on your turn, immediate is any time but consumes the resource for the turn which comes after). Allowing people to take as many actions as they want from a turn that hasn't come yet sounds horrifically abusive. I'm pretty sure your DM will agree about that much.

And, for the record, almost all "swift" actions are special things which enhance what you can do on a turn. Downgrading an action from Attack to Move means you cannot do as much with it. Given that, it seems bizarre to me that you could "give up" a less powerful, fairly limited type of action (usually move actions literally ARE just for moving from one place to another, or drawing/stowing something, and VERY little else...) for a more powerful, less limited type of action.

That said though? Abusing swift-action spells is the single biggest issue with allowing more swift actions. And while PF made some effort to improve the non-casters vs. casters, casters are still dramatically more powerful. While I think this whole thing is a silly and unsupported idea...it honestly might help bring non-casters more into balance with casters.

Yes, swift actions are actions that modify what else you do in a turn, but the issue is that combining or repeating actions that weren't intended to be mixed that raises balance issues. Like the Monk that can take 9 actions in one turn at level 12, or the 1st level Magus that can Sneak Attack like a 3rd level rogue.

Limiting swift actions to 1/turn sounds like a small thing, but everything I've discovered that can happen without that rule makes it clear it's a bad idea to let players exchange their move and/or standard actions to take more.

Holy crap, for a second there I was misreading and thought it said you could Swift Action any time during the turn cycle. That'd be horrifying.

Swift actions are once per turn, but do not count as an 'action', in layman's terms. In other words, they -aren't- part of the move/minor/standard roundup that's usually available to all characters, and represent a separate category in addition to these options. The GM can check both the books and the website. If he still wishes for them to take an action, it -is- a DM's houserule. By virtue of roleplaying games, it is within his right to state this such, but it is NOT the original ruling as set by WotC or Paizo.

A DM whom is unwilling to accept this as a houseruling, and willing to accept how unreasonably unfair altering it could be needs to take a moment to consider whether or not being a DM is a suitable position for them. DMs must remain impartial, but also needs to understand the importance of player fun. If a player is not having fun, it's a good time to check up on why. If a player feels a ruling is unfair, it's the DM's responsibility to explain why and provide an even-handed ruling, though it should happen outside of the game proper.

That really depends on who is in the DM chair. But swift actions can only be used on the user's turn.

That seems....pretty overpowered. I don't have much experience with Pathfinder or swift actions (basically played 2 games. A test game and another one that didn't complete before stopping) and I don't know your players, but that seems like a bit much, especially if they wanna keep the rules for swift casting. House rules can be helpful and fun, but this...seems like a bit much. Unless the next enemy's are gonna be really powerful or with a lot of HP, then yeah, might be too much.

I just repeated myself a lot. Sorry. XD

I think the most problematic issue with this idea (which I seem to be alone in thinking would be a fun way to handle actions) is the idea of repeating an action over and over. Monk of Four Winds getting 9 standard actions in a turn is ridiculous. Mages of various kinds casting three spells a turn is also ridiculous. But a Monk-Barbarian (Or Monkbarian which I now realize is an impossible cross class because alignment restrictions but I'm just riffing anyway) using a Ki Jump and activating his rage to place him neatly in the middle of things for wild amounts of damage is reasonable (though perhaps on the far end of the spectrum.)

However, looking through the other comments again, that reminds me of another thing. The classes that Pathfinder lifted wholesale from D&D really don't have this problem of leaping into realms of ridiculousness with a benefit of extra swift actions. The base classes like Magus start to and some of the "better" archetypes do. But a vanilla Monk with extra swift actions just gets to basically quickcast Mage Armour and make his fists into magic weapons.

The one class I'd be worried about sans archetypes is Barbarians since their Rage plus Rage Powers can make a first round of combat a little ridiculous. But after that it would be equivalent to what you get with a vanilla Monk. Archetype, Base and Prestige Classes are overpowered on their own though.

But since your group obviously plays with those sorts of classes then the real way I would look to still let your DM get his extra swift actions and not hand the game over to the players at that point is no one gets to use swift action class abilities more than once a turn. A character could still cast a quickened spell and take advantage of a feat. Sure. A character could make a standard attack into a Ki Strike and poison his hands with Adder Strike. But that way everyone is hit with the same restriction as the Mages and it doesn't have people making 9 attacks a turn.

I'll suggest to him that it would be best for each swift action to be limited to class ability OR feat. That would allay my fears of balance issue.

Truth is, the reason I'm being so obstinate with Other DM is because I know our gaming group. Two players live to break the system and this house rule, without any caveats, makes that way too easy. Since PC's have greater access to swift actions this rule skews things massively in the PC's favor and I don't want him to rage-quit another campaign.

So long as you're not letting casters cast more than one quickened spell a round, I don't see much of a problem with it.

Sure, a 12th level Monk of the Four Winds could get potentially 9 standard actions in one round, but what point would it have? You're burning a daily resource to get more actions, but what action would you take? You can't cast spells, use spell-like abilities, or do anything that would really do anything broken. You've also used up all of your Ki-pool points.

There could be unforeseen consequences with certain abilities, but so long as you limit each ability to 1/round, there is really nothing I can think of that makes the mundanes more powerful than the casters.

Since it can easily be left up to a player to determine how best to game the system just to beat the game - and, in my experience, that tends to override playing roles - I think the rules need to be used as written when such is beneficial to game balance. Otherwise, the spirit of the rules needs to be adhered to. Balance is very important to make sure all people, players and GM alike, have fun with the game. Turning the tables (not brought up yet, but it's possible for a GM to turn this ruling on the players) really just causes the game to turn into a contest of besting one another - maybe some people like that, though, so...

Anyway, that's all I have.

As people have said above, gaining extra swift actions doesn't really let most classes do anything so allowing them to do so is pointless. The action rules are game abstractions, but they are necessary for balance. The Pathfinder designers limited swift actions to one per turn because they presumably don't want people activating several feats at once in order to do immense damage or automatically flee or incapacitate multiple opponents at once, etc. And because letting a caster get off more than one quickened spell per round would be insane and unfair to other classes that can't do anything with extra swift actions.

I think you need to ask this other GM WHY he wants the rules to be changed. If he already rage quit a game once because of min/maxing system abusers then why in the nine hells does he want to make it easier for them to do so?? I'm completely baffled.

Swift actions are a mixed bag. As a player who has taken advantage of feats that use them (see: Short Haft and Arcane Armor Training) I would be hesitant to allow more of these. That said, if the actual feasibility of a given intended course of actions is left to DM discretion in each specific instance, I would not have much of a problem with it.