My understanding, and how I use it is anytime we dont play out a combat, we use the battle skill. Quick and painless. Anything we actually play out, use the results of that
I never noticed the longer time in RQ3 either, even though I have played a lot of it. And I dont ever remember anybody running put of a spell. Combat has never made it to the end of 2 minutes much less 5.
Simple and straight forward. Kyger litor initiate with good spirit combat casts soul attack at the best melee PC. This locks them into a spirit combat they probably cant win, or even survive very long. My party has one of these and they use it regularly. It was a first time rqer that came up with it for this party. He carefully read all of his spells ad relized this was probably going to be hard to stop