Need help building a "smart" fighter

[Akto]

Hey there people Of the playground

I come seeking your help, in an upcoming city/politic/evil empire along the road game i want to play a "smart" fighter kind Of guy. Race is lesser tiefling and stats after racial modifiers are as follow:
Str: 16
Dex. 18
Con: 14
Wis: 11
Int: 20
Cha: 10

With flaws i have 5 feats, only one set in stone is knowledge devotion to keep up the smart fighter shtick.

Atm i have 6 levels to play with which 4 are set in stone. Factotum for the først 3 and Warblade the 5th

Some ideas i have had is to throw a lvl Of Swordsage in there aswell so i can benefit from the Nice dex to dmg and taking ewp: spiked chain to benefit from thf

The idea for the character is to run a combined gambling den and underground gladitorial arena, where he participates himself now and then.

So in short i need fighting skills, high skill ranks pr. Level, prefer d8, but d6 might be okay

[Gwendol]

Swashbuckler? Seriously, this looks like a daring outlaw kind of build. Just go swash/factotum?

[Thespianus]

Swashbuckler? Seriously, this looks like a daring outlaw kind of build. Just go swash/factotum?

Factotum don't help much in a Daring Outlaw build. Only Rogue and Swashbuckler levels stack by RAW. But ask the DM.

Factotum and Warblade will probably be boosted by taking "more of the same". I doubt that there are any PrCs that really help here.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I'll agree that you could greatly benefit from Swashbuckler 3 on this character. Use a Spiked Chain or an Elven Court Blade unless you're going for TWF. If you don't plan on getting Daring Outlaw or anything else that requires Grace, switch it out for Arcane Stunt in CM.

If you're going to have trapmonkey skills, say you bested the Iron Wyrm Vault detailed in CS to get the feat Tactile Trapsmith for 3,000 gp instead of spending a feat on it. That will switch your Search and Disable Device skills to Dex-based, and your Brains Over Brawn ability will allow you to add your Int bonus back into them.

[Telonius]

One level of Unarmed Swordsage sounds fine, but I'd wait until 6th to take it. If you take it at 4th, you're effectively a 2nd-level initiator, which means you can't select some of the (nicer) 2nd-level maneuvers, like Cloak of Deception or Burning Brand. Swordsage is a good setup for getting into Master of Nine later on. Pick up Shadow Blade (the feat) and Weapon Finesse as soon as you can, and focus on Dex; the rest can basically turn into dump stats.

For skills, is iaijutsu focus allowed? Jump, Tumble, Intimidate, and Concentration are probably the four basic ones you want, as far as ToB skills go. 5 ranks of Balance is also a good idea. For the backstory, Bluff and Sense Motive are probably pretty important to a gambler.

[ahenobarbi]

Do you want fighter to be "smart" just for role play? If it is the case you probably don't want more than 14 Int. If you want Melee/Skill monkey maybe mix feat rogue (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#rogue) mixed with some full BAB class?

[BowStreetRunner]

Factotum 3 / Warblade 17 would work just fine for a 20-level build. The only thing you really get from Swashbuckler is INT to damage which Warblade gets in a limited form at 7th anyway. I would just go straight Warblade after finishing out Factotum.

[Talionis]

I also agree Warblade is a very good choice. I'll remind you that Warblade allows for extra feats and you can use those to pick up some Swordsage manuevers and stances. Warblade recovery is so much better than Swordsage and while a one level dip in Swordsage gets you a lot, it maybe hard to role play and just may not be what you want.

If you need Weapon Focus to qualify for something, Swordsage is stronger. Swordsage also would be a good choice if you want to go into Master of Nine Prestige class.

[Gwendol]

Sure, but for the build at hand I'd say two levels of swashbuckler would work very well: free weapon finesse for the chain and insightful strike.

[Bonzai]

For my "intelligence" based build, I went Swash 3/Warblade 4/Duelist 3/Eternal Blade 10 (not necassarily in that order). Duelist was taken solely to avoid multi-classing penalties, as it was an Elf I was using for the build. Without multiclassing penalties, I would take 3 more levels of Warblade instead. Then maxed out concentration checks and focused on Diamond Mind manuevers (with an elven Court Blade).

[TopCheese]

Well for something simple and fun a Fighter/Warblade build works wonders.

I just put together a Human Fighter/Warblade "mage slayer" build for a tier 3-4 game. I'm rocking a good str, con, and int score but I don't have to worry about my ref/will saves which is just icing on the cake. Little bit of mild optimization and the build works wonders.

Outside of that... I put my hat in the Factotum builds that have been suggested.

[Eldariel]

Factotum 4/Warblade 16 or Factotum 3/Warblade 17 would be my choice. I'd use some Combat Expertise-derived stuff; probably Improved Trip and Knock-down (goes well with maneuvers). Some Fonts of Inspiration will probably also be necessary with your extremely limited Inspiration-pool with low Factotum level count. 5 is a good number tho that'll take some time to acquire.

[Akto]

Thanks for all the suggestions, some very usefull ones in the mix :)

was thinking, we have 30k starting gold and can buy LA off at 13k pr. LA any suggestions about a better race or template to add to my L. Tiefling?

[Talionis]

Elf for eternal blade.

[Telonius]

... regular Tiefling?

Dark Creature (from Tome of Magic) is a +1 template, and can help enormously if you're taking any Shadow Hand maneuvers.