A medical device system includes a cardioverter-defibrillator for detecting and treating ventricular tachycardia (VT). The medical device system includes a sensing module for sensing a cardiac signal from available cardiac signal sensing vectors. A control module generates morphology templates of the cardiac signals for multiple patient postures for each of the available sensing vectors and determines a set of posture-independent template features. An unknown cardiac rhythm is classified in response to comparing features of a cardiac signal received during the unknown rhythm to the set of posture-independent features.