Martial Practices did need better treatment, no lie. They did follow certain patterns though.
• Give a +10 to a particular skill check
• Able to replace 2 skill checks with another if your choice
• give bonuses to particular things you do like fortifying animals and campsites
And not to mention other things as well. I've been in the process of cross comparing Martial Practices with Skill Utility Powers and found some interesting stuff. Although it doesn't help that what was published in Martial Power 2 came out before Skill Powers came out, so it came off a little wonky. However because of a recent conversation, I've been rethinking the role of Martial Powers in relation to encounter types (combat, social, exploration).
Some ideas that popped up were warriors taking an hour to hone their weapons and armor in order to give it stat bonuses for a period of time (combat, and could be done by reworking Forge Armor and Forge Weapon). Looking at the martial practice is already in the book, most of them seem to work well with exploration based events anyways and I'm just starting the process.
We will see what I come up with.
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The only 'beef' I had with Martial Practices, and its not impossible to address, is that they, in effect, become a set of 'secondary skills' that impose incompetence on anyone that doesn't have them. For example, an MP 'fortify campsite', implies that you NEED that MP to be able to fortify a campsite!
I think there are two ways to look at it. For very esoteric niche things its fine. So, not everyone can forge a passport, you really do HAVE to train in some fashion to do that, and just having Thievery at +20 isn't specific enough. You want to forge documents, learn the MP 'Forge Document'. As long as designers are VERY careful to keep to this niche concept its OK. The problem is the question of how it relates to powers (particularly skill powers). Its easy to end up with an MP that basically grants a power or obviates any number of powers. Again this is probably an issue of generality. MPs that grant skill bonuses need to do so for VERY specific situations and require sufficient prep or resource expenditure to avoid stepping on skill powers.
I think WotC abandoned MPs for the simple reason that it required so much designer discipline and if they let all the various freelancers loose with it they probably felt they'd end up with a lot of stuff cluttering Dragon articles that was going to amount to "get a +5 to your Stealth check pretty much any old time if you just do this practice first", or "build a boat" and things like that, which run into the above problems.
I hate to say it, but I created the solution to this sorts of problems in my game. NOTHING is granted except by operation of the plot of the game. There is no concept of the character 'leveling up' and THEN the player goes off and attaches new stuff to his character. Nor is the idea of simply buying new capabilities really a thing. You complete encounters, which generate boons, which are related to the action, and that provides you with new stuff (though maybe it can be indirect, like you learn where to go to get certain training, or make an ally who shows you how to do something).
You can of course pretty much play this way in 4e, it just wasn't the standard convention that evolved for 4e where players are expecting to have access to anything in the book and just get a budget to work with.
Such as a Warlord who specializes in manipulating enemies.
