Fighter School Combat Styles

[Animus]

Hello,

I'm creating a fighter for a campaign that's about to start. In an effort to add flavor, I thought it would be a good idea to connect feats and feat chains certain fighter schools. I'm just starting to work on it now, but if anyone has done this kind of thing before, can you please point it out to me so that I get get some good ideas? Thanks.

 

[Crothian]

It has been done in the Quint Fighter by Mongoose and FFG's Path of the Sword.

 

[drnuncheon]

...although both of those give extra benefits for taking the 'school' feats (and I believe both charge XP for those benefits). If you don't like that idea, those books probably aren't what you're looking for.

What I've toyed with doing is having a list of feats that were the feats for a particular 'style', and then making one or two feats that are unique to that style - you can't learn them without a) a significant number of feats from the style, and b) being trained by someone who has mastered a style. Those feats represent the 'secret techniques' of the style.

Quintessential Fighter II has a 'technique' section that might help, letting you make combination attacks and magical attacks.

J

 

[mr_outsidevoice]

Oriental Adventures has ideas with Martial Arts styles. After you get the pre-req of both feats and skills, you spend a feat to represent style mastery. There is no need to restrict the style to unarmed attack.
Using Third-party and Home-Brewed feats, you can make more schools than you can possibly use.

 

[spider_minion]

Masters of Arms (by Second World Simulations) has a ton of really cool weapon maneuvers. If your schools are based on specific weapons, this is the book to get.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

The Complete Warrior has some fighting style feats. They're mostly for two-weapon fighters though.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=books/fr/fightstyle

This link is a bunch of feat chains with the names of each style in Drow.

Edit: Some of the CW feats are also available for free on the WotC site.