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I had a flash of insight today, all it would take to make a decent warrior-mage is some feats to add a magical flair to some maneuvers. For example:

Martial Arcana Specialist:
You've trained for many years to blend swordplay with magic. These are fruits of your labors.

Level 1: Elemental Weapon-
You have learned to infuse your weapon with seething energy.
Benefit: Pick an energy type, when you use a meneuver that deals damage, you may convert the damage done into this energy type. The energy type you chose may be changed during a short rest.

Level 3: Aegis-
You can conjure a shield or force to protect yourself and others.
Benefit: Your parry and protect maneuvers can be manifested as barriers of pure force. This extends their protection to include ranged and energy attacks. Alos, you need not be armed anymore to use those maneuvers.

Level 6: Wind Step-
Your astounding leaps become even more amazing with a dash of magic added to them.
Benefit: When you use your vault maneuver, you can change direction once during any part of the jump. The height and overall distance covered remain then same though.

Level 9: Mind Over Matter-
Your force of will and magical talent are channeled through your body to lend you great strength.
Benefit: You may add your Intelligence modifier to the total check result when you use the Mighty Exertion maneuver.

As interesting as I think it would be if they ditched the concept of class as it stands now and had most classes chopped up into backgrounds and specialties, I don't think it will ever happen. Just like I don't think the fighter and rogue will ever become one class.

I do agree that feats/specialties should lack any and all prerequisites. I feel it would open up character options and concepts that wouldn't be gated by ability prereqs.

And I really don't understand why they're sticking to feats coming in at 1st and every 3rd. Why can't we just have a feat at every odd level? 

Thats where the elbow grease comes in.

PS, I am not suggesting the game be published with just two classes.  But as we see with your post, a creative DM could put together Specialties that are concept oriented and not just a stocking with some feats stuffed in them.

One thing I was thinking was to allow the suggested feat progression from the Specialty but also allow the player to select some general feats somewhere in the progression. 

Nov 1, 2012 -- 9:23PM, ymmv wrote:

I had a flash of insight today, all it would take to make a decent warrior-mage is some feats to add a magical flair to some maneuvers. For example:

Martial Arcana Specialist:
You've trained for many years to blend swordplay with magic. These are fruits of your labors.

Level 1: Elemental Weapon-
You have learned to infuse your weapon with seething energy.
Benefit: Pick an energy type, when you use a meneuver that deals damage, you may convert the damage done into this energy type. The energy type you chose may be changed during a short rest.

Level 3: Aegis-
You can conjure a shield or force to protect yourself and others.
Benefit: Your parry and protect maneuvers can be manifested as barriers of pure force. This extends their protection to include ranged and energy attacks. Alos, you need not be armed anymore to use those maneuvers.

Level 6: Wind Step-
Your astounding leaps become even more amazing with a dash of magic added to them.
Benefit: When you use your vault maneuver, you can change direction once during any part of the jump. The height and overall distance covered remain then same though.

Level 9: Mind Over Matter-
Your force of will and magical talent are channeled through your body to lend you great strength.
Benefit: You may add your Intelligence modifier to the total check result when you use the Mighty Exertion maneuver.

I really like the ideas presented here. This is what good brainstorming is all about! You are using feats correctly in the fact that they are granting options and small improvements rather than giant leaps in usefulness in abilities. Kudos.

One criticism, it does kind of force the fighter to take two particular maneuvers. But this can easily be remedied by skipping the feats if the maneuvers required are not desired.

Good post! Keep it up!

That is a problem I noticed, but only managed to weave into Elemental Weapon since it applies to all maneuvers that deals damage. Aegis could be further extended to cover all maneuvers that prevent damage.  You could also change Mind Over Body to affect any Str, Dex, or Con check that is modified by a maneuver. Here are a couple of replacements for the two end feats.

Level 6: Wind Strider-
When combat commences, you dance among the wind and avoid all obstacles in your path.
Benefit: When you use a maneuver that involves movement, you tread upon the air just above the ground, which allows you to ignore most difficult terrain and pitfalls. If you do not end your movement on something that can support you, you fall.

Level 9: Words of Warding-
You have mastered short utterances of power that protect you from all manner of dangers.
Benefit: When you use a maneuver that affects a saving throw, you may use your Intelligence modifier in place of the die roll if it is higher.

These still restrict you to certain maneuvers but do give you some choice. Ideally, I'd prefer to design a whole bunch of feats, some specific and others narrow, and just throw them all into a Martial Arcana bucket and say pick one at each particular level.