swashbuckler/swordsage legendary captain??

[koelhanna]

Hi, im starting an adventure with friend on sea. Mostly stormwrack and playing 3.5 dnd. Im playing the captain of the ship being a Legendary Captain PrC .
We will be lvl 8 and i must take at least 1lvl on my PrC.
So far, i wanted to be a kind of swashbuckler on the sea. For now i thought of being:
Swordsage 4 / swashbuckler 3 / Legendary Captain 1.
Dont want to go for sneak attack as we already have a rogue in the group. And still can choose a good weapon of choice. Rapier? Elven thinblade? Sunsword? Am i going wrong with my build?
Str 13 dex 16 con 14 int 14 wis 16 cha 13
I want a duelist-kind of character. I am human.
Any hint will be appreciated
Thx

[Ellowryn]

Personally i would drop the swordsage if you are avoiding the sneak attack route. You should probably grab something like Swashbuckler 3 and Paladin 3/ Fighter 1 or just Fighter 4, i would lean towords the paladin because Cha to saves, Aura of Courage (which i believe can be expanded by feats), and Immunity to disease would suite the charisma heavy captain of a ship.

[koelhanna]

The maneuvers was something new and appealing for me. The wisdom was for the profession (sailor) too. I have a high cha officier to keep the crew together. I really wanted stance and maneuvers this time hehe. And i dont want to be heavy armored on the sea... ill surely have to swim from time to time..
And about my gears i have 20k to spend for all of it.
And i might add that the "official good guy" of the story is a captain fighter/pally. I want to be different yet useful in the team. The fact about sneak attack is i dont want to just do that an be helpless when i cant.
;)

[Kennisiou]

Swordsage is going to help you a lot if you're int based, actually. It does a great job of giving you lots of class skills and skill points to spend them on and some desirable class features. I suggest you take the shadow blade feat, which means if wielding a shadow hand weapon in a shadow hand stance you deal +your dexterity in damage. From there either wield a shadow hand weapon (dagger, siam, shortsword, unarmed strike, spiked chain), or wield any other weapon with the adaptability enhancement from tome of battle, which makes the weapon count as any weapon for the purposes of feats (meaning you could dual-wield elven thinblades or kukris or whatever and still get shadow blade on them). As for good shadow hand stances to take... assassin stance is the go-to (+2d6 sneak attack damage) but if you dislike that then don't worry! Shadow hand stances are all great. Assassin stance is the most combat-ready, but all the other stances are still solidly strong. Don't worry about being "helpless" when you can't sneak attack with assassin stance, either, since you can always swap to a stance that's more useful if you aren't getting your sneak attacks, and the +2d6 is hardly the defining point of the build here, it's just very very nice.

Additionally, if you think it's fitting for your character, consider the education + knowledge devotion combo. Education is a feat gives you all knowledge skills as class skills, knowledge devotion gives you bonus damage against enemies based on how good your knowledge roll to identify them is. This gives you more ways than just swashbuckler 3 to make intelligence a damage stat, which I'm sure your build will appreciate. Consider swapping your wis for int. You'll get a lot more mileage out of intelligence even with Swashbuckler's wis to AC and other features, trust me.

From there I'd suggest you consider going twf, since this kind of build tends to work nicely two weaponing. You could sword-and-board, or einhander, but the feat support for all of those are lackluster and twf generally just winds up being stronger. Or you could twohand, but if you're not going strength and are already looking at classes like swashbuckler and swordsage than two weapon fighting will generally do a lot more for you.

[Ellowryn]

I can understand that, the only problem is that a swordsage is a sneaky character. Its sorta like taking the monk and rogue and rolling them into one class except its farm better than the two together. While not reliant on SA, it benefits greatly from it, and its main discipline shadow hand, is mostly about sneaking around and crushing opponents before they can crush you. If you want to be the sort of character that hides in the background yet has the most important job of dealing with threats outside of view then that works, but that doesnt really fit the idea of a captain at least to me.

Issue number two is that only having 4 levels of swordsage really kinda hampers any advancement of the class. I assume by your build you are focusing on the Int to damage from Swashbuckler, along with the Wis to damage from Swordsage, and maybe grabbing the shadow blade feat for Dex to damage, right? Thats all well and good but a lot of the good maneuvers come online late for the class, which is pushed back for the Swashbuckler and Legendary Captain levels.

And also, any thoughts on Dread Pirate from CA? It has some nice abilites even if you go the honorable captain side of the progression.

[koelhanna]

Dread pirate seem more melee combat oriented and legendary captain more naval combat oriented. Didnt saw this one, i might ask DM if i can take it ( legendary captain was his demand). So should i dump swashbuckler for 7 swordsage/1 dread pirate? Or keep swashbuckler 1 for finesse feat required by dread pirate and dump my int bonus (which is low atm) to damage? And what u think about sunsword? A +1 bastard ( diamond mind ), shortsword ( shadow hand ). EtcR page 210-211. I want a good blade not too expensive and not feat heavy.

[Ellowryn]

Well to figure out the answer to which PrC to take, what are you going to be dealing with more? Melee or ship combat? Then pick the PrC appropriate to the style of play.

The thing is with ToB classes people tend to go one of two ways: Grab one or two levels of the class to get a specific stance or maneuver Or go full class and dip one or two levels in others for specific abilities. You just need to pick the flavor of what you want.

Swashbuckler 3 isn't horrible, even with your low int score because stats can always be raised. It does take away from your Initiator level but that goes back to weather you want all swordsage or not.

And weapons will always get expensive, even if not immediately, but any one-handed weapon will work as it is mostly flavor unless you go Swashbuckler 3 which needs a piercing weapon.