As I’ve written it elsewhere, I’m running Tyrian Conspiracy with the new R7 from Athas.org. 2 Players are playing gladiators (elf gladiator 6 and halfling gladiator 6).
During the 10 game sessions, they never used their Gladiator performance abilities (Martial Stance, Martial Display, Team Strike). They thought about using it before they reach 6th level but they always choosed to attack normally instead of using their “gladiatoral performance”. I thought it would change with 6th level but between a move action, a second attack or even a bluff check, the gladiatoral performances doesn’t seem worthy.
1. Proposal: to change the action type: 1-5th level: move action; 6-11th level swift action; 12+th level immediate action.
2. Proposal: try to link this kind of feature with the Improved Feint ability. I say this because the temptation is huge to biclass gladiator/rogue… it would be better if there were already special gladiator class features interesting to use on surprised opponents. Here I’ve not specific proposal…
What do you think about? Have you different experience during playtests?

That’s a very useful suggestion for change and I will incorporate it into my own campaign as the gladiator in my group wasn’t too excited about the gladiatorial performance for the same reasons you mentioned.

Personally, I feel the actions required to use this ability are appropriate. With that said, if a player wants to be able to use the ability quicker it should cost them a feat in order to do so.

The feat is a good idea! Something as “Improved gladiatorial performance” would be more balanced.