Alternate uses for Martial Lore?

[Abithrios]

I am in the process of making my first Tome of Battle character. I am thinking about putting ranks in martial lore, as knowing about combat is part of my concept for the character. On the other hand, the listed uses of martial lore only seem to interact with other rules and characters from Tome of Battle, which is inconvenient in a campaign that was published earlier than ToB.

I would like it to be a useful skill, but I am not sure that it will be useful with only the published uses. What else should skill in martial lore allow me to do?

[QuintonBeck]

As a DM I usually rule Martial Lore to be the Equivalent of Knowledge (Tactics&Military) and it allows players to be able to look at a battlefield and see that the enemy is likely setting them up for a flank, or a route, or that with so many supplies there clearly must be a bigger force stationed nearby who they don't want us to know about. Also works for identifying martial types, ah, he's dressed all in full plate and that stance looks like something from the Devoted Spirit School, probably a Crusader. Stuff like that.

That said, you'll have to ask your DM if he or she would be okay with allowing it to work like that.

[Eldan]

Identify feats and abilities the enemy uses, maybe? Or determine their attack bonus and damage dice?

[Emperor Tippy]

I let Martial Lore against a DC equal to the creatures CRx2 tell the user one martial thing about the target.

So you use Martial Lore and, for example, learn that the creature has an AC of 30. Or an AB of 18. Or the feat Shock Trooper.

Fluff wise its being able to recognize and deduce all kinds of information based on things like stance, size, weapons, previous knowledge, etc.

But RAW wise it is mostly worthless.

[Chronos]

If you do open up Martial Lore to telling you non-ToB things, then you should probably also add it to the skill list for a bunch of other classes. Fighters (and rangers and paladins and barbarians and...) should be able to recognize those things, too.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I always hated how subjected to metagame knowledge readied actions are. It's usually way too obvious that the person has readied and what exactly they're doing.

So I try my best to obscure those facts, by pretending the monster delayed instead. Or did an action but failed.

Martial Lore check can ID that they're readying and what it is they're doing.

It's also basically my de facto identification method for any strange martial feat or ability you might encounter. I make Martial Lore a class skill for Fighter, Monk, Paladin, and several other martials, btw.