Skill Mastery Feats
Feats like Acrobatic and Alertness offer a decent bargain for your feat when compared to Skill Focus, providing more overall bonus, but spreading it across two different skills, one of which you may not really want. Further, they don’t actually let you do anything new or exciting with those skills, just give you a flat, numerical bonus. This seems like a shame, so I decided to sit down and make some “next step” versions of these feats, which provide a small mechanical bonus, in the form of a reroll, and then grant you a pair of special abilities, one for each skill. There are ten feats like Alertness in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook. Here are upgrades for the first five.
Acrobatic Mastery
You can use acrobatic skill to dodge deadly attacks, and make incredible hairpin turns while flying.
Prerequisite: Acrobatic, character level 5th.
Benefit: Once per day, after making an Acrobatics or Fly skill check, but before the result is revealed, you can reroll the check. You must use the new result, even if it is worse. Additionally, you gain the following abilities.
Acrobatic Dodge (Ex): As an immediate action, when a creature makes an attack or combat maneuver check against you, you can make an Acrobatics check with a –5 penalty, using the result in place of your AC or CMD for that attack or combat maneuver. You must be on the ground in order to use this ability, not flying or swimming. You can use this ability once per day for every 5 ranks of Acrobatics you possess.
Sharp Turns (Ex): When you make a turn as part of your movement while flying, if you succeed on the Fly check to make the turn, you can do so without spending any additional movement. You can use this ability once per day for every 5 ranks of Fly you possess.
Alertness Mastery
You can sense what drives others, and spot an oncoming conflict in an instant.
Prerequisite: Alertness, character level 5th.
Benefit: Once per day, after making a Perception or Sense Motive skill check, but before the result is revealed, you can reroll the check. You must use the new result, even if it is worse. Additionally, you gain the following abilities.
Combat Alertness (Ex): You can choose to make a Perception check at a –5 penalty, rather than making an Initiative check. You can use this ability once per day for every 5 ranks of Perception you possess.
Sense Motivation (Ex): By conversing with a creature for one minute, you can make a DC 20 Sense Motive check to attempt to learn what sorts of tactics will be most likely to influence them. If the target is specifically attempting to avoid being read in this way, it becomes an opposed roll made against the target’s Bluff, instead. On a success, you learn whether the target is particularly more or less likely to respond well to each of Bluff, Diplomacy, and Intimidate checks, and also learn a particular motivation or personality trait about the target, such as “loves his family” or “ambitious,” and can gain a +4 bonus on a single Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate check made using this information. You can use this ability once per day for every 5 ranks of Sense Motive you possess.
Animal Mastery
You can compel animals quickly and effectively.
Prerequisite: Animal Affinity, character level 5th.
Benefit: Once per day, after making a Handle Animal or Ride skill check, but before the result is revealed, you can reroll the check. You must use the new result, even if it is worse. Additionally, you gain the following abilities.
Quick Handle (Ex): You can make animals respond without delay to your commands. You can handle an animal as a swift action, or push it as a move action. You can use this ability once per day for every 5 ranks in Handle Animal you possess.
Quick Spur (Ex): You can spur your mount as a swift action, rather than a move action. You can use this ability once per day for every 5 ranks in Ride you possess.
Athletic Mastery
You can climb and swim with great speed and surety.
Prerequisite: Athletic, character level 5th.
Benefit: Once per day, after making a Climb or Swim skill check, but before the result is revealed, you can reroll the check. You must use the new result, even if it is worse. Additionally, you gain the following abilities.
Quick Climber (Ex): As a swift action, you can perform an accelerated burst of climbing. You can either climb at half your normal speed at no penalty (instead of climbing at a quarter your normal speed, or suffering a –5 penalty for accelerated climbing), or you can climb with only one free hand at the normal speed, with no penalty (instead of needing both hands free to climb). These benefits last for 1 minute. You can use this ability once per day for every 5 ranks of Climb you possess.
Quick Swimmer (Ex): As a swift action, you can perform an accelerated burst of swimming. You can swim at half your normal speed (instead of doing so at a quarter your normal speed) for 1 minute. You can use this ability once per day for every 5 ranks of Swim you possess.
Deceit Mastery
You are a master of deception, able to fool even yourself, and change faces in an instant.
Prerequisite: Deceitful, character level 5th.
Benefit: Once per day, after making a Bluff or Disguise skill check, but before the result is revealed, you can reroll the check. You must use the new result, even if it is worse. Additionally, you gain the following abilities.
Lie to Yourself (Ex): By repeating a lie to yourself often enough, you can come to practically believe it, making it that much easier to convince others. This process takes 10 minutes, and requires that you succeed on a Bluff check with a DC equal to 10 + your Hit Dice + your Wisdom modifier. Success indicates that some part of you truly believes the lie, even though academically you recognize it for what it is. When telling that particular lie, you ignore effects that prevent you from lying or that reveal lies, such as zone of truth, and you gain a +2 bonus on Bluff checks made to convince others of that particular lie. This lasts for 24 hours. If you fail the Bluff check to convince yourself, you cannot try again for that particular lie until the next day. You can use this ability once per day for every 5 ranks of Bluff you possess.
Quick Disguise (Ex): You can create and don a disguise as a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity. Rushing a disguise in this way necessarily makes it more difficult to make it convincing, and you suffer a –5 penalty on the Disguise check. You can use this ability once per day for every 5 ranks of Disguise you possess.