Sembian Fencing issues

[amber91]

So I was doing a bit of research on the forums on the topic of Sembian Fencing, and then decided to pick up the feat, however I see some issues and also have some questions:

1) How does it interact with TWF? I realize the bonuses are based purely on BAB, or base attacks per round, so what happens to all the off-hand attacks? Do you still only get 2 attacks per round with two weapons, or 4 attacks per round with PTWF?

2) Sembian Fencing mode gets disabled on many different triggers... It seems highly unusual for the mode to get disabled whenever I switch out cloaks or gear, not just weapons. It's also bad when it switches off from switching weapons, since sometimes one needs to switch to different weapons in-combat. On top of that, there's a forced 6-7 delay before being able to reactivate. This is all assuming we notice the ability gets disabled in the first place (see issue #3) (note: I don't have this issue with One Weapon, though; One Weapon seems to only get disabled when I unequip weapons.)

3) We need persistent buff/user feedback for combat modes: This probably applies to all combat modes (One Weapon, Sembian, Northlander, etc.), but it would be very helpful to people who use these feats to have some sort of visual indicator when they are on or off, not just the overhead text which is easy to miss in combat but also don't seem to appear in some cases (see #2). Currently, we have to check the character sheet to make sure the bonuses are active or not. It's a problem that's especially egregious when I use multiple combat modes and switch between them in-combat, not having a visual indicator which one is currently active. In general, since we typically sheath our weapons, or the modes get disabled for unexpected reasons (see #2), it's easy to not realize One Weapon or Sembian Fencing is not active anymore.

These issues make otherwise pretty nice and balanced feats somewhat problematic, especially when trying to work with multiple different combat modes (I realize only one can be active at a time, but I actually find it useful to have different modes available to switch between on-the-fly). The "on-the-fly" part does not work very well at all due to the #2 and #3 issue.

Is the design intention for characters to pick only one of these feats and discourage switching between them?

Thanks for any insight!