Please critique this gestalt build

[Kaje]

Warforged Factotum 1/Spirit Lion Totem Barbarian 1/Factotum 18//Swordsage 1/Scout 19

In battle, he can full attack on a charge, which means quite a bit of skirmish damage. He can also use the common factotum trick of iaijutsu focus + gnome quickrazor for extra damage against flatfooted folk. And if he charges a flatfooted opponent, which he should be able to do with his good initiative, watch the hell out! This in addition to the other awesome things a factotum can do, 1st-level maneuvers, and rage 1/day.

Abilities: This is what I’m not sure about. He’ll need a good INT and DEX, and a decent STR and CON. Warforged can help with that last one, but it’s still MAD. 32 point-buy.

Skills: Iaijutsu Focus of course, and others that could make him a good skill-monkey or face. With factotum and swordsage at first level, that gives a ton of skill points to spend on anything he wants.

Feats: Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Gnome Quickrazor), Font of Inspiration

Maneuvers: Burning Blade, Distracting Ember, Wind Stride, Counter Charge, and two more to be determined. Child of Shadow for his stance. Figure this gives him a variety of options that work well with his iaijutsu focus and skirmish abilities.

So, what do you think? Am I missing something that would make these things not work? Is the build too MAD to function well? What would you add/change? Am I an idiot? Should I go with a different race? And et cetera.

[Morbis Meh]

Actually you do not need strength at all, with weapon finesse and shadow blade (compliments of shadow hand school from swordsage). However, you still need 4/6 stats to be decent, with really high Dex and Int. The flipslide is if you are always in assassins stance you get some decent sneak attack with the use of an inspiration point. The one downside is that this char will have lowish HP making it hard to stay in combat for very long.

[Lyndworm]

A few suggestions:

You should probably take the Swordsage level after the Scout levels. You can qualify for higher level maneuvers that way.

Take Ferocity (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) instead of Rage. That will up your all-important Dex bonus.

See if your DM will let you apply Kung Fu Genius or Carmendine Monk to Swordsage so that you can use your Intelligence bonus in place of Wisdom.

[FMArthur]

You should probably take the Swordsage level after the Scout levels. You can qualify for higher level maneuvers that way. Also, see if your DM will let you apply Kung Fu Genius or Carmendine Monk to Swordsage so that you can use your Intelligence bonus in place of Wisdom.

What if he wants to play the character at normal levels? Man, this is the reason I don't like the Initiator Level system. The longer you delay your martial adept levels, the more powerful your character is in the end, but for the practical purpose of playing the build at levels lower than that, your character will be incomplete until then. 'No Fun Now in exchange for More Fun Later' choices are awful game design.

[Lyndworm]

What if he wants to play the character at normal levels? Man, this is the reason I don't like the Initiator Level system. The longer you delay your martial adept levels, the more powerful your character is in the end, but for the practical purpose of playing the build at levels lower than that, your character will be incomplete until then. 'No Fun Now in exchange for More Fun Later' choices are awful game design.

I agree with you entirely, actually. I was just trying to maximize 20th level mayhem.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I would change the 19 levels of scout for 4 levels of scout + 15 levels of ranger, add Swift hunter as the level 4 scout bonus feat. Better Bab, the same Skirimish and the ability to skirimish your favourite enemies.

[Kaje]

Thanks for the input, folks. It's much appreciated.

I'm fine with having just 1st level maneuvers, what with all the other stuff I can do. Plus omg skill points.

Someone mentioned the wisdom bonus for swordsage, but I looked and as far as I can tell, wisdom isn't important for a ss until level 2, and this is just a 1 level dip.

I like the idea of going into ranger. But I can't keep my wis too high, so spellcasting would suffer. The variant from complete warrior would give me a few SLAs and would give back the Fast Movement I lost from barbarian, except 10 levels later. I know it's not often considered a good trade, but would it be ok in this case?

[kestrel404]

I'd suggest a somewhat more radical change, to focus in on 2.5/6 stats (to whit, Int and Strength, with Con coming in a respectable 3rd).

Factotum 5/Barbarian 1/Factotum +14//Warblade 1/Scout 5/Duskblade 14

What you get: +19 BAB, 4th level arcane spells, you may full attack while casting (but cannot do this on a charge), arcane casting in medium armor (like, say, Celestial Platemail), and you qualify for the Improved Skirmish feat. There are also lots of other fun tricks, like the fact that you can recover your maneuvers after a full attack (instead of taking a round to do so), you can quicken 2 spells/day for free, you can use Warblade to switch that exotic weapon proficiency to ANY OTHER exotic weapon you find with an hour in game, and factotum/duskblade complement each other very nicely for spell selection/spell quantity purposes.

Hope that helps.

[Gnaeus]

D8 hp/level for gestalt is pretty weak.
Only 1 good save, and reflex is the least important save.
Medium BAB
No level 9 spells, powers, maneuvers. I would never call a gestalt strong without full progression in casting, manifesting, or ToB.
Skill duplication. Having skillmonkey on both sides still only gives you 6 skill points per level.

I would call it weakish for gestalt. Not terrible, factotum is an awesome class by itself. It is much better than Fighter//Barbarian, for example. But not nearly as good as Wizard//Factotum or Factotum//Warblade or Wizard//Scout/Ranger (Swift Hunter)