Martial Study/Bind Vestige Feat trees - any good?

[Calimehter]

I'm running a E6 game that uses the Generic classes from UA.

It definitely keeps things simple, but one thing I was considering allowing (largely because I didn't disallow it in the campaign pack :smallwink: ) was access to feats like the Bind Vestige line from ToM and Martial Study from ToB. In the setting I am running, I would probably have to tie them to specific fluff elements like special schools of training (yeah, yeah, tying fluff to crunch isn't popular, so sue me), but I would kind of like to make them available to folks who were interested, or even just a special NPC or two. I've never messed around with Binders or martial adepts before, so using those feats seems like a simple way to introduce them and see how they mesh with the campaign.

I imagine most folks just take the class levels instead of the feats, but if anyone has used said feats, I'd be curious as to how it went, whether it was worth the effort, whether it was over/underpowered, that sort of thing.

Thanks in advance for any useful stories (it may be a while before I can respond). :smallsmile:

[Kelb_Panthera]

Bind vestige isn't terribly impressive, even with improved binding. If you're throwing out binder, then there's just not enough support for binding to really bother.

Martial study/stance works pretty well though, since they can be backed up with the Crown of the White Raven type items and martial scripts.

If you want to completely unlock initiating then a simple tweak to martial study will do it. Remove the restriction of only taking it 3 times, and change initiator level to equal character level instead of half character level. Bam! Generic warrior becomes a martial adept.

[Kuulvheysoon]

If you're allowing those, might I suggest also looking into the Shape Soulmeld feat tree? It's a similar idea to those.

[avr]

Martial Study's iffy on its own because it is 1/encounter only for a non-martial adept, but it does unlock Martial Stance which is an always-on ability. Hunters Sense is a stance which gives the scent ability, there's another stance which gives 2 hp back each time you hit and there's others which are situationally useful.

[Marthinwurer]

If you want to completely unlock initiating then a simple tweak to martial study will do it. Remove the restriction of only taking it 3 times, and change initiator level to equal character level instead of half character level. Bam! Generic warrior becomes a martial adept.

I'd suggest BAB over character level myself. Keeps the casters from having the same powers as the warrior with spells to boot.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Or just only make class level 1:1 w/ initiator level for the non-casting generic classes...

Martial Study will be a bit limited w/o such a rule but still decent. Martial Stance is great either way, even if you can only get level 1 stances. Good level 1 stances:

Leading the Charge: +3 (or 6; if houseruling) damage for all allies when charging.
Bolstering Voice: +2 to everyone's will save, might be significant in an E6 game.
Child of Shadow: If you plan to spring attack or tumble hit-and-run, this gives you 20% miss chance just for being you.
Island of Blades: You count as flanking with any other ally threatening a foe w/ you, regardless of positioning.
Hunter's Sense: Scent.
Iron Guard's Glare: -4 to hit other creatures than yourself on all enemies you threaten. Probably more significant in E6.
Martial Spirit: You or nearby ally heals 2 hp each time you hit in melee.
Step of the Wind: Ignore difficult terrain and get attack and trip bonuses against foes in it.


And yeah, that's like 3/4 of the stances. Many good options.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I'd suggest BAB over character level myself. Keeps the casters from having the same powers as the warrior with spells to boot.

The generic spellcaster has better things to do with his feats. He also doesn't have enough of them to get most high-level maneuvers of note.

IL = character level can still allow a gish via multiclass warrior/spellcaster.

It's a houserule though, so whatever you think will work best for your group is the "correct" answer.

[Psyren]

Bind Vestige/IBV are pretty bad, yeah. The one decent use is for Naberius, so you can take 10 on Diplomacy and Bluff while under pressure and rush Diplomacy in 1 round instead of 10, all with no penalty. Since this costs you two feats, a Binder dip is still a better idea even if that's all you want to be able to do with it... but if the class is banned while the feats aren't it's at least an option.

The one nice thing about BV/IBV is that you gain access to all the listed vestiges instead of just to one. So even for a very niche ability like Dahlver-Nar's immunity to Wis damage/drain, having the feat lets you pull it out on that one adventuring day where you might find yourself needing it. Or at very low levels/wealth, you can summon up masterwork full-plate from Savnok.

[Curmudgeon]

If you're allowing those, might I suggest also looking into the Shape Soulmeld feat tree? It's a similar idea to those.
The problem with this is: the Open {Least/Lesser/Greater} Chakra feats allow you to bind a soulmeld to that chakra slot if you have a chakra bind available. None of these feats state that they also grant a chakra bind, thus a non-incarnate character cannot bind any soulmelds.

[Kelb_Panthera]

The problem with this is: the Open {Least/Lesser/Greater} Chakra feats allow you to bind a soulmeld to that chakra slot if you have a chakra bind available. None of these feats state that they also grant a chakra bind, thus a non-incarnate character cannot bind any soulmelds.

Be aware that this is one of two popular interpretations.

The other is that open X chakra allows you to bind anything to that chakra, as the feat would be nearly useless otherwise.

Curmudgeon's interpretation may or may not be more RAW than this one, but whether it's RAW or a houserule this interpretation makes the feats actually worth a feat slot. I'd suggest using it.

[Psyren]

If you restrict it to needing a chakra bind from an external source, the feat violates its own RAW - it says you can do something that you can't actually do. The easiest ruling is to let it grant a bind as well as granting access to the chakra, and it certainly doesn't break anything to rule this way either.

[Darrin]

The problem with this is: the Open {Least/Lesser/Greater} Chakra feats allow you to bind a soulmeld to that chakra slot if you have a chakra bind available. None of these feats state that they also grant a chakra bind, thus a non-incarnate character cannot bind any soulmelds.

The exact RAW:

Shape Soulmeld: "If you have the ability to bind a soulmeld to a chakra, you can bind this soulmeld to any chakra available to you (as long as the soulmeld can be bound to that chakra)."

Open Least Chakra: "When this feat is selected, choose one of the following chakras: crown, feet, or hands. You can now bind a soulmeld or a magic item to that chakra."

Neither of those mentions or requires an open chakra bind. Shape Soulmeld gives you a soulmeld and a meldshaper level. Open <blah> Chakra says you now have the ability to bind it. If there were any other requirement, then the text should have mentioned it, because as far as RAW goes, it says it can now be bound.

To argue otherwise would be the equivalent of saying Manyshot doesn't work by RAW because the combat rules says you can only get multiple attacks on a full-round attack. If the intent wasn't to break the general rules, then the feats would be completely worthless. Even if you don't allow the Open <blah> Chakra feat to grant "chakra bind +1", then the text from Shape Soulmeld effectively gives you "chakra bind +1".

[Kelb_Panthera]

The exact RAW:

Shape Soulmeld: "If you have the ability to bind a soulmeld to a chakra, you can bind this soulmeld to any chakra available to you (as long as the soulmeld can be bound to that chakra)."

Open Least Chakra: "When this feat is selected, choose one of the following chakras: crown, feet, or hands. You can now bind a soulmeld or a magic item to that chakra."

Neither of those mentions or requires an open chakra bind. Shape Soulmeld gives you a soulmeld and a meldshaper level. Open <blah> Chakra says you now have the ability to bind it. If there were any other requirement, then the text should have mentioned it, because as far as RAW goes, it says it can now be bound.

To argue otherwise would be the equivalent of saying Manyshot doesn't work by RAW because the combat rules says you can only get multiple attacks on a full-round attack. If the intent wasn't to break the general rules, then the feats would be completely worthless. Even if you don't allow the Open <blah> Chakra feat to grant "chakra bind +1", then the text from Shape Soulmeld effectively gives you "chakra bind +1".

Okay, okay, both sides of the argument have been presented. No need for further comment here.

This discussion will go on for a while if anyone wants to argue it, and that'll derail this thread somethin' fierce. Perhaps a new thread is in order if you feel strongly enough about it to go into detail?

Tell you what, I'll even make it. Look for it on the front page immediately after this post.

[Calimehter]

Hmmm.

I probably won't make any changes to improve Martial Study - even if people are only using it to get to Martial Stance, that's a two-feat investment (in a feat rich environment) for a fair amout of power, which seems fair to me.

Per Psyren regarding BV/IBV: I sort of thought that when reading it. It didn't seem like many of the bonuses by themselves were worth the investment, but the ability to choose which one you wanted from a fair sized list might make it worth it. Maybe.

I dunno about Incarnum - I know even less about it than the other two systems, and it sounds like the wording might be iffy. Maybe I'll go with the conservative interpretation simply for my own sanity. :smallwink:

Thanks for the feedback!

[Answerer]

The conservative interpretation means that the feats won't get used in almost all cases. I strongly recommend the more liberal one. It makes them quite solid feats, but not automatics, which I think is how it should be.

[Fouredged Sword]

If you allowed martial study and stance feats I would strongly consider allowing a "capstone" feat at the end of the tree allowing a recovery method and allow more of the full initiator feel to a character who wants to go that route. Use BaB as Initiator level. Feat should look something like this, tone down to taste..

Martial Adept
Requirements - Ability to use at least three martial maneuvers and one stance.
Benefit - Pick a recovery method. You gain all stated abilities and bonuses.
Warblade - You can recover all known maneuvers on any round you do not use a martial maneuver by taking a standard action, making a single attack action, or a full attack action.

Swordsage - Treat your Initiator level as two higher than your Bab, up to your HP. Immediately learn 4 more martial maneuvers. You can recover all known maneuvers as a full round action.

Crusader - You begin combat with all known maneuvers readied. Once you have used 2 maneuvers your abilities refresh and you ready a random maneuver known. Each turn you ready another maneuver at the start of your turn. Once all maneuvers have been readied or used the system resets and you gain one random maneuver readied.

[Kelb_Panthera]

If you allowed martial study and stance feats I would strongly consider allowing a "capstone" feat at the end of the tree allowing a recovery method and allow more of the full initiator feel to a character who wants to go that route. Use BaB as Initiator level. Feat should look something like this, tone down to taste..

Martial Adept
Requirements - Ability to use at least three martial maneuvers and one stance.
Benefit - Pick a recovery method. You gain all stated abilities and bonuses.
Warblade - You can recover all known maneuvers on any round you do not use a martial maneuver by taking a standard action, making a single attack action, or a full attack action.

Swordsage - Treat your Initiator level as two higher than your Bab, up to your HD. Immediately learn 4 more martial maneuvers. You can recover all known maneuvers as a full round action.

Crusader - You begin combat with all known maneuvers readied. Once you have used 2 maneuvers your abilities refresh and you ready a random maneuver known. Each turn you ready another maneuver at the start of your turn. Once all maneuvers have been readied or used the system resets and you gain one random maneuver readied.

I see what Four-edged was going for here, but those aren't quite a match for the actual martial adepts' refresh mechanics. Unless you're going for a rebalance of the refresh mechanics, you should probably just copy the segment from the relevant initiator.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I think his idea was to differentiate the recovery aspect, otherwise everyone would choose Warblade.

[Talionis]

Martial Adept recovery method as an epic feat, I would suggest allowing non-martial adept classes to take the existing feat Adaptive Style ( Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords, p. 28) .

Basically take a full round doing nothing and you get all your maneuvers back, its not overpowered but its a recovery method. If you don't like that then I would just grant everyone either the Warblade or Crusader recovery mechanic as an Epic Feat.

But I would only grant one option and I would make it as manageable for you as possible. They should appreciate just having a decent way to get maneuvers back during a campaign.

I too would suggest the liberal interpretation on the Soulmeld Feat chains, but I think I would save it for another campaign. You are adding a lot in this campaign. Magic of Incarnum is a wonderful material and I'm just starting to play with it a little, but I will say its a cumbersome material, so I would just give MoI its own day.

[Answerer]

I think his idea was to differentiate the recovery aspect, otherwise everyone would choose Warblade.
The Crusader recovery method is by-far the best one available. The Crusader-variant that he's posted is actually quite a bit better, even, than the usual one.

[Fouredged Sword]

They where rough ideas. Balance would be an issue, but I feel the swordsage option would be for characters who sacrificed BaB but wanted a martial feel.

The crusader is a strong recovery method, but as you start back at 1 each time, and you can't remove known maneuvers from your pool of known maneuvers to ready you could very easily get stuck with the wrong abilities when you need them. Remember that a normal crusader resets with 3 or 4 readied maneuvers, not 1.

Thus the breakdown would be as follows.

Swordsage - Rogues and spellcaster mixes would take this route to increase the initiator level to make up for lost bab.

Warblade - for the more focused character who wants to know lots of maneuvers.

Crusader - For the character who wants just a few maneuvers he can use alot.

[silverwolfer]

Don't really want to read every single post to see what was said but here is what i'd suggest..


Binder is rather easy to learn , the system is simple, just picking who you want to be is the hard bit.


Martial system is just about the same, except you add learning how to use the spells along wiht it.