[ Feat ] Path Study

[I_Got_This_Name]

For Shadowcasters who don't know enough Mysteries, to help counterbalance the ill effects of spreading yourself too thin.

Path Study
Your knowledge improves in a Path that you already have access to.
Prerequisite: Path Focus
Benefit: Select a Path that you have Path Focus in. You learn any one Mystery from that Path, provided you meet the normal requirements for it (two mysteries of one level below it, one of which must be from the same path). You can select a Mystery you already know, in which case you gain an extra set of daily uses for it.
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take this feat, it applies to a different Path. Shadowcasters may take this feat as a bonus feat.

Greater Path Study
Your knowledge improves more deeply in a Path that you already have access to.
Prerequisite: Greater Path Focus, Path Focus, Path Study
Benefit: Select a Path that you have Path Study and Greater Path Focus in. You learn a new Mystery from that Path, provided you meet the normal requirements for it.
Special: You can take this feat multiple times. Its effects do not stack. Each time you take this feat, it applies to a different Path. Shadowcasters may take this feat as a bonus feat.

So, how balanced are these? I don't think they're too overpowered, because even if a Shadowcaster just learns the first thing in every path with class Mysteries for the bonus feats, they get their first 2nd level Mystery at level 4, and their first 3rd level is put off until level 9; their fifths come in at level 13, sixths at 16, and they only get one Eighth-level Mystery, learning that at level 20. Of course, they could be more efficient, taking a 2nd level mystery at 4th level, no 3rds, a 5th level mystery at 10th level, no 6ths, an 8th at 16th level, learn another 8th at 17, and have two 9th-level Mysteries to finish with.

[Fax Celestis]

I'm failing to see the difference between the two.

[I_Got_This_Name]

It's the same as the difference between Path Focus and Greater Path Focus: they do the same thing, but they stack (and two's the limit).

[Fax Celestis]

...okay, that'd be a good selling point, except that the feats don't specify you can only take them twice. They say you can take them more than once, through which I should be able to take them for every single one of my feat slots.

[Shhalahr Windrider]

Just like Path Focus, you can take them multiple times, but they must apply to different paths.

So the idea appears to be thus:
Take Path Focus (Ebon Whispers) and voice of shadow. Later on, take Path Study (Ebon Whispers), and gain access to congress of shadows without using up one of your mysteries known. For your next two feats, take Greater Path Focus (Ebon Whispers) and Greater Pathe Study (Ebon Whispers) to gain flicker. Then, you can do the same with say, the Dark Reflections path.

Seems a bit complicated, though since your likely only taking the first mystery in any given path, you get a fair number of bonus feats through gaining access to a large number of paths. I think it's probably fairly well balanced.

[I_Got_This_Name]

You can spend no more than half your feats on them due to needing Path Focus, and can only take Path Study and Greater Path study once per path.

Assuming you take only the first Mystery on every path with a Human Shadowcaster, and burn all of your feats on this tree, you still only have 18 feats; that's nine mysteries of levels other than 1st, 4th, and 7th (my 1st-post calcs assumed that you were doing something useful with your normal feats); if we divide them evenly, that gives you three Apprentice mysteries (2 second-level, one either third or second), three Initiate mysteries (two of which are 5th, one possibly 6th), and three Master mysteries (two eighth and one 9th), and no feats other than this tree (including the Path Focus feats). No Metashadow. No Favored Mysteries, no Nocturnal Caster, no Item Creation, no feats. Just a lot of Mysteries, Path Focus in 6 paths, and Greater Path Focus in 3. Not an optimum use of feats.

(Edited): Shhalahr has it right. Getting a lot of bonus feats so that you could blow them on this and know a lot of paths, and some really well was a concern; hence the Path Focus prereq, to increase the cost so that you can't just learn 20 paths, and get 10 higher-level Mysteries for free.