Talk:Practiced Initiator (3.5e Feat)

Ratings

	Leziad favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!
	I like that feat a lot, very multiclass friendly.

BackHandOfFate favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!

Given that maneuvers aren't nearly as powerful as spells and how few feats a character ever gets in his life, I am completely comfortable with a +4 boost to IL. You'd have to take 8 or more levels in non IL classes to get the full benefit from this feat, and that in and of itself can be a potential limiting factor when designing a sublime character. This feat gets my stamp of approval. Span is the man.

DanielDraco likes this article and rated it 3 of 4.

I do not bow at the altar of ToB. It's probably the best-balanced book WotC has put out for 3.5e, but it has its flaws -- chiefly owing to the fact that it is scarcely less hostile to multiclassing than spellcasting is. There are reasons that spell levels suck, and all of those reasons apply to maneuvers even moreso for the fact that they generally do not scale with level. The half-stacking thing doesn't fix its hostility to multiclassing. It mitigates the problem somewhat, but it provides nothing that resembles a complete fix. This patches the problem a little more.

	Eiji-kun favors this article and rated it 4 of 4!
	Silly Ghostwheel, this is lovely. You're still need to be at least 17 HD to gain any level 9 maneuvers (and with at least 13 of those being initiator levels). Gaining level appropriate access for a feat certainly sounds right to me. Counter-favored!

	Ghostwheel opposes this article and rated it 0 of 4.
	I am strongly of the belief that this shouldn't be, since IL rises naturally with non-IL levels anyway. You can get level 9 maneuvers even with 6 non-IL levels, and this just ruins the system that ToB put in place.

Wait a second...

Is there any significant difference between this feat and this one? --DanielDraco (talk) 18:58, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Practiced Initiator is twice as strong, and Havvy didn't pick a balance point? --Foxwarrior (talk) 23:08, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh, completely missed the different number. --DanielDraco (talk) 03:08, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I totally thought I'd seen this feat on the wiki before, but I searched everything I could think of and couldn't find it. Spanambula (talk) 08:30, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

It didn't come up when I did a search for 'Sublime'. Huh, that's wierd. Still, I prefer this one over the other. +2 IL is simply not worth a feat. --BackHandOfFate (talk) 14:18, 8 October 2012 (PST)

The strength of this feat (and mine) both depend on what maneuvers you currently have, what other classes you take, and and whether you take an initiator class in the future. It could provide absolutely no benefit, or it could unlock gamebreaking abilities. For that reason, it's unquantifiable. --Havvy (talk) 05:42, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

The "no benefit" situation shouldn't be relevant (Weapon Focus on a paralyzed psion! Woot!). What sort of gamebreaking abilities are you thinking of, Havvy? --Foxwarrior (talk) 07:18, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Say that there's a very high balanced discipline with lots of crazy save or dies or use and win abilities. A couple of initiator levels could unlock more powerful versions of these abilities, and be very high. While using this feat when the only discipline you have is a low powered discipline, in which case both of these feats would be low power. On average, disciplines are high balanced on the wiki though. --Havvy (talk) 02:37, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow. At BEST, this feat allows you to multiclass out for up to four levels and still get the same benefit as a straight initiator class. You can't use this feat to get higher level maneuvers/stances any earlier than you would otherwise. I've yet to see any reasonable discipline be game-breaking. Spanambula (talk) 04:08, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

To expound what Span implies: Access to potentially broken disciplines is irrelevant, that's a property of being an initiator, not of the feat. The feat itself allows no new access to material you otherwise wouldn't already have with straight initiator class X, ergo why its power is quantifiable. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 04:14, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Well, I suppose that with a discipline where all the maneuvers were equivalent in power to spells of the same levels, this feat would be like a Practiced Spellcaster feat that actually gave you higher level spells. --Foxwarrior (talk) 06:34, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

But maneuvers =/= spells of the same level, nor should they. No one's going to let you use a 9th level maneuver that gives you the effect of Wish or Miracle. This is still comparing apples and oranges. Spanambula (talk) 07:15, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Arcane swordsage gets them. --Ghostwheel (talk) 12:46, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

You mean the variant in the adaptation section of the swordsage, which is hardly one paragraph long and is pretty much guideline for homebrew? Because that HARDLY relevant, especially since I am pretty sure an Arcane Swordsage isn't high level. --Leziad (talk) 13:17, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

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Saying that this feat is overpowered for High because you can mix it with Very High material is like saying orange juice is alcoholic because you can mix it with vodka. --DanielDraco (talk) 15:20, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Multiclass Patch

As long as you're doing an IL multiclass patch, how about adding the ability to replace an old maneuver known with a new one (just like their existing retraining mechanics) whenever you would gain enough levels to increase your IL with a class to an even number. And allowing two swaps when you select the feat if it boosts your IL all at once perhaps. Something to take the weirdness out of your options being class order of acquisition dependent basically. - Tarkisflux ^Talk 21:36, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm on the fence about this. On one hand, retraining maneuvers in ToB is stupidly limited. However, I feel like adding something like what you suggest would definitely bump this feat into VH range, and I wasn't really wanting to make this a feat of that level. Since even the PrCs in the Tome of Battle don't let add your PrC levels to your base CL for the purpose of retraining, I'm tempted to leave it off. That kind of change would be better suited to a houserule, IMO. Spanambula (talk) 02:29, 9 October 2012 (UTC)