Martial Power 2
Martial Practices
Supplement by Richard Baker
In today's Martial Power 2 preview, we look at martial practices; beyond the exploits for which they’re famed, martial heroes can push the bounds of what is possible for ordinary mortals by mastering these challenging techniques. Using these rare methods, an adventurer can run for days, swim to great depths, and even create magic items. Although martial practices approach what’s possible with rituals, they exist wholly in the realm of martial power.
Talk about this Martial Power 2 excerpt here.
Personally speaking, I've never liked the level limit on rituals (and now, on martial practices). I simply use them as a general measure of power level, but allow characters of any level to perform them, just like with magic items. Granted players still have to acquire the ritual and meet the material/skill requirements and cannot automatically acquire rituals that are beyond their level. They are rewards.
Forge Weapon is pretty useless, and I assume Forge Armor works the same way. Without the option to give enchantments other than Magic Weapon, I just don't see it as being valuable at all.
Alter Ego looks decent for rogues.
Tracker's Eye. OK. Isn't this practice just giving reference DCs for what players were already doing with Nature/Perception from the very beginning? Is a martial practice really required to deduce numbers, direction and other information when examing tracks? That's exactly what you'd get from just a vanilla skill check. At least it gives a +5 to perception checks for tracking for the remainder of the day, so it's not a total wash.
Guessing from the names, it sounds like some of the others are in the same boat as Tracker's Eye. Will "Word on the Street" be totally redundant with what you already do with Streetwise checks all the time?
Tracker's Eye. OK. Isn't this practice just giving reference DCs for what players were already doing with Nature/Perception from the very beginning?
Pretty much. The task of convincing people that you do not need a character option to specifically permit you to do something in order to be able to do it just got boatloads harder.
If this practice is marking any kind of trend, I may end up banning martial practices from my table. I don't want the presence of these things impinging upon my players being able to do what they want.
But yeah, it does indeed provide hard rules for things that up until now a lot of people have houseruled. The limited utility of craft weapon/armor without specific enchantments has been argued ad nauseum, but people still wated it for their blacksmith characters. Lots of people wanted hard numbers for thing that have normally been resolved through roleplaying and houseruling and now they're getting it.
Much like rituals, these simply won't be used around our table.
I'm going to ignore the otherwise awesome Forge Practices because I use inherent bonuses.
You have to remember that you need no original weapon to do this, so even using Inherent Bonuses you'd be able to make a sword without there being any shops about to buy it from, sure it's less handy and probably a bit expensive for just a sword but maybe the DM will simply let you make a nonmagical sword using this for whatever price it has instead.
Dragoncat, I am tremendously disappointed when I see you as the last poster on any given thread, then I look and don't see any kitten pictures.
There is a time and a place for all things, and all things must come at the proper time and place. For if the kitten picture is placed where a kitten picture is not surprising, the wisdom of the ambush is foiled, and all will become used to them, and the magic will be lost.
In all things, balance.
Alter Ego
Fair enough. I like this one.
Forge Weapon
Eeeeh, I see what they did here, but I don't like it. I think I'll broaden the things they can create to "Magic weapons, or any other 'magic' weapon that you can justify to me as crafting in a nonmagical fashion. For instance, I can easily see Vicious weapons being non-magical, maybe Duelist's, maybe Resounding - heck, maybe even Vorpal."
Tracker's Eye
Hm. I think I'll let the user gather more/better info with this than he would with Perception alone. Perception is pretty... bare-bones. Thinking about it, I let my players discover the modifiers on the list (time since tracks were made, whether they were obscured, whether the creature is huge or larger, whether there was a group, and whether it was larger than 10 creatures). With Tracker's Eye, I might just let them ask questions, and give them answers depending on whether or not there would be decernable signs left - maybe things like "Were they wearing heavy armor? Did they have scouts? Did they have anyone moving with the group, but seperate - like guards?".
At this point, I'm kind of "meh" about requiring a feat for players to use these things. I may just offer them up as "things you can do with particular skills (if you're trained)". At the same time though, it's one feat - I think that may be a fine cost, in general, for access to "Improved Uses" for skills, along with a handful of other, non-skill, options (Forge Armor/Weapon for example).