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If I'm a wizard and I have Haste cast on me, can I perform the incantation twice as fast? Slow has a similar stipulation that spells with casting time of 1 action take twice as long, and presumably a spell with 1 minute casting would take two minutes.

Logically it seems like spells require a certain set of steps to perform, so being able to perform them twice as fast would speed up the process. Same as if I had to spend X minutes putting on armor or cutting down a tree.

Phantom Steed has a casting time of 1 minute. Would casting it while hasting myself reduce that to 30 seconds?

V2Blast
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EagerToLearn
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  • I've noticed most of your questions haven't been marked with a green check. It would be great to go back and let those users know that they have solved your problems by marking the best answers with a green check. You also get a few rep points for yourself when you do! – Thomas Markov Oct 21 '20 at 20:16

2 Answers2

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This doesn't work for multiple reasons.

Firstly as Purple Monkey says, spells only do what they say and Haste doesn't mention altering the casting time of spells.

The other reason this won't work is that Haste is a concentration spell. Although Phantom Steed is not a concentration spell, it has a casting time longer than 1 action, and the rules for spellcasting state the following (emphasis mine):

Certain spells (including spells cast as rituals) require more time to cast: minutes or even hours. When you cast a spell with a casting time longer than a single action or reaction, you must spend your action each turn casting the spell, and you must maintain your concentration while you do so. If your concentration is broken, the spell fails, but you don't expend a spell slot.

The second reason rules out casting Haste on yourself and the first rules out having someone else cast it on you. So no, haste cannot reduce the casting time of a spell.

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linksassin
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    @V2Blast's edit to the question (a minute before you posted this answer) made it more explicit that it's also considering the case of someone else concentrating on Haste, or an item providing it without concentration. Of course the first part of the answer (that Haste doesn't do this) still rules out faster casting. But maybe you can reword the 2nd part of this answer to point out that it applies to concentrating on your own Haste. And if it did work, a cast time of 2 rounds could become 1 Action, making something castable while concentrating on Haste. (Again if anything did that.) – Peter Cordes Feb 22 '19 at 02:59
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    @PeterCordes The final line of the answer indicates that the first part still applies to another caster casting Haste. – linksassin Feb 22 '19 at 03:08
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Spells only do what they say in their description.

Haste says nothing about reducing the casting time of spells, so it doesn't.

Purple Monkey
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