Dipping in Swordsage

[MrLemon]

First of all, hi

I've enjoyed reading the posts here for quite some time now, though i haven't been posting myself.

Now I have a question about progessing my current character, which is a
Rog 6 / Ftr 4 / Thief-Acrobat 4 (CAdv)
with (imp.) two-weapon fighting and weapon spec. in short swords.
The character ist rather old (with which i mean flawed), which is balanced by the fact that there's little optimization in my group.

Currently I'm thinking about dipping 2 levels into swordsage, mostly to diversify my combat options. Finally my questions:

I haven't found any Wisdom (or other) requirements for Maneuvers. Is that correct?

As far as I understand, I get to choose Maneuvers and Stances of up to 4th level (1SS + 14/2 other classes makes my effective level 8). Is that correct?

If it is, my current Maneuver Selection (with level, prereqs) is:
Distracting Ember (DW 1,0)
Zephyr Dance (DW 3,1) (mostly to qualify for Searing Blade)
Searing Blade (DW 3,2)
Cloak of Deception (SH 1,0)
Wolf Fang Strike (TC 1,0) (to qualify for Death from Above)
Death from above (TC 4,1)

My Stance would be Assassin's Stance (3,1)

Any suggestions about these choices, or any oversight in my part maybe?
The 2 Tiger Claw Maneuvers are there to qualify for the level 5 Maneuvers I get access to at level 16.

As a side note, I also haven't fully decided on my next feat. Improved Critical would be neat in conjecture with Telling Blow (PHB2?) though.

Thanks in advance for any help :)

MrLemon

[IncoherentEssay]

Correct, manouvers have no stat-prerequisites and your initiator level is indeed 8.

RAW, you cannot have Assasin's Stance as your first pic though, since the text for stances states "You begin play with one 1st-level stance from any discipline open to you." So your first stance needs to be a 1st-level one, though it is reasonable to assume that it was not written with multiclassing in mind. Ask your DM if it could be houseruled. If not, maybe pick it up next level then.

Also, you only need to fulfill the prerequisites for manouvers at the end of the 'select manouvers' step, so you don't need to pick them in a progression like you have and can just have all of them be 4th level manouvers, filling in the prerequisites for one another. This is an intented feature, so that higher level initiators can trade away low-level manouvers for level-appropriate ones without having to worry about maintaining a connected "skill tree".

So trade Wolf fang Strike for Sudden Leap (for getting close and still having the action left to full attack or moving in, using a strike and leaping out of range or some extra distance/better angles before/after a run action if you need to flee) and maybe Zephyr Dance for Searing Charge (having a perfect manouverability flying charge can be useful from time to time, more so than the counter would be anyways).

Make sure to take Adaptive style for your feat, so you can both trade in situational manouvers and ready all manouvers in one go instead of one at a time.