mechanical precedent is mechanical precedent. you can house rule otherwise but it probably won't feel right.
just as a reminder, the earliest you can possibly have a 4th degree maneuver is level 12. that's 6th level spells for spellcasters. i think i can believe the guy who can keep up with...
nothing i can think of. a feat would be the easy way to do it, but a stance would make the most sense - the problem is that, the way maneuver traditions are structured, it doesn't really make sense to just "add more" to a preexisting tradition, so precedent would require its own entire tradition...
the added line of "access to a forge" implies smith's tools don't include one (which the tool description says outright)...so i'd probably say a portable forge is, like, a 10 gp item that's like 20 pounds and counts as a bulky item, that can be used in place of a forge. or you could increase the...
i remember in a campaign that's currently on hiatus we had to climb up a large cliff face in a hostile plane with flying creatures harassing us to reach an objective.
we didn't roll anything to climb the cliff face. we just slowly moved up it while we had a conversation between the party and...
1. add them to the herald spell list. adding spells to your prepared list is baked into the paladin class, not its subclasses. the herald doesn't share it so it doesn't get to do it
2. probably to help avoid choice paralysis. i had a herald in the last campaign i ran and she seemed to be fine...