Inner Darkness Swordsage Concept.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I have been toying with a character concept; but I am not sure how to properly put in mechanics, so I ask the collective minds of the playground to help me.

The concept is a character who has a sort of alternate personality which fights in a completely different way than normal. The original personality is calm and collected while the alternate is feral and wild.

What I was thinking was Dipping Barbarian two levels for Spirit lion totem, wolf totem and Berseker Strength ACF, then going the taking swordsage for the r4est of the levels focusing on Diamond mind for the dominant personality and on Tiger Claw for the alternate personality, only using TC maneuvers while Berseker Strength is active.

Not sure how I can make this better, so do you have any suggestions?

ECL doesn't matter as it is a thought exercise, assume all books available and 32 point buy.

[eggs]

Is Berserker Strength being houseruled to count non-Barbarian HD? Because if it's not, I'd advise reconsidering that element. Rage is more flexible in its applicability anyway.

An alternative would be just using stances to replicate this. Punishing Stance for Rage v. Stance of Clarity or Step of the Wind for the two personalities, or something along those lines.

In general, it sound like it could work, but swapping maneuvers between styles on the fly seems like it could be problematic. You might want to see if you can get a "Wizard of the Sun and the Moon"-styled variant for the Swordsage, maybe at the cost of the first Discipline Focus.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I haven't checked the Berseker strength to be honest, I just remembered it from the Schrodinger Bearbarian thread and thought it would work better as it is an involuntary change.

As for changing maneuvers on the fly that wasn't the idea, as with the amount of maneuvers a swordsage gets it is easy to ready both sets of maneuvers and just use them with the particular "mindset".