Building an Unarmed Swordsage

[DnDGuyDude]

Hello,
I've been redirected to this site in order to get help building my first Unarmed Swordsage, as my ninja died in the last session I played.
I've already did some of the work myself through guides, but I'd like some guidance so I won't mess it up.

We are playing 3.5e, and my character is level 10, and a human.
The stats are 13 str, 20 dex, 12 con, 11 int, 18 wis, and 11 cha.
I've already chosen the stances Child of Shadow, Assassin's Stance, Pearl of Black Doubt, and Hearing the Air, as we encounter quite a few invisible beings, and have put Weapon Focus on Setting Sun, Insight Focus on Tiger Claw, and Defensive Focus on Shadow Hand.
If you guys could comment on what I have so far, and help me pick maneuvers and feats, allocate skill points, and buy items, that would be great. As for items, I have 58k starting gold.

Thanks a bunch!

[Captnq]

Well, take a look at my sig. The EVD is still in beta, but the combat section is fairly complete. Check back in a few weeks when I finally get the Body Augmentation Section finished. All sorts of fun stuff involving grafting tentacles to your body and what not. I highly recommend chopping off your arms and getting Warforged Mighty Arms. Since you are unarmed, you can never have too many natural attacks.

Funny Side note: If a warforged (who comes with a slam attack) replaces his arms with warforged arms, by RAW he gets another slam attack. Weird, huh?

Also look into Battle Gauntlet, which is a weapon that is actually "unarmed" so you can attack using unarmed, yet it is One-handed, so you can dual wield it. If you are into power attacking and what not.

Ward cestus a good idea. Necklace of natural weapons, bracers of striking, blah blah blah, just key word search "Unarmed" "Monk" and "Natural" I'm sure interesting things will come up in the combat files for unarmed fighters.

[DnDGuyDude]

Your EFD mostly covers what items to get and stuff, but again, I am very inexperienced with this, so it doesn't really help me.

[questionmark693]

I'd recommend putting your Discipline Focus abilities all into Shadow Hand, and Making sure you have weapon finesse and shadow blade. I'd also recommend looking at snap kick and superior unarmed strike, they both are pretty helpful for the route you're looking at.
As for skills, I have no idea what skills get commonly used by your DM, so I'll leave that up to your judgment-but UMD is never a bad choice.
As for maneuvers, try to get somes that make your enemy flat-footed (shadow hand has a couple I think. Things like Steely Wind and Wolf Fang Strike are nice for getting more than one attack out of your standard actions, I'd recommend those.
Hope that helps a little bit.

[DnDGuyDude]

Is Shadow Blade even usefull for an Unarmed Swordsage?
The Tome of Battle says the feat lets me use DEX instead of STR for damage when attacking, but only when using a Shadow Sun weapon.
Does that mean it doesn't apply when using unarmed strike?

[Gavinfoxx]

Okay... don't listen to that guy.

If you ACTUALLY want help, read these:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=181705

http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2030

[questionmark693]

Shadow Blade works with Shadow Sun weapons-which include the unarmed strike. Though apparently I don't know what I'm talking about :smallwink:

[Gavinfoxx]

Though apparently I don't know what I'm talking about :smallwink:

I meant he needs a zoomed out viewpoint, he needs some more context before he can go into the details.

[questionmark693]

That makes sense. I'm not actually an amazing optimizer though, so I wouldn't have been offended if you had meant I was totally wrong :smallsmile: