Need some help on a gish swordsage/illusionist

[Nammen]

Hey all, this is the the first gish I ever made so I figured I would ask for some help here.

Things to know about the campaign: We are starting at level 5 (which is why I took my ToB class at lvl 5, so the 4 wizard levels would give me IL 3 for maneuvers), we are using point buy, my DM has decided I can take a class other than gnome to qualify for the Shadowcraft Mage PrC and we don't use the exp penalties for multiclassing.
When I say wizard 4 I mean that I take 4 wizard levels at that point.


The current plan I have is this:
Wizard 4, ToB class 1, Wizard 1, Jade phoenix mage 4, Shadowcraft mage 5, Jade Phoenix mage 5
Which would give me IL 15 for 8th lvl maneuvers, Spellcasting level 17 for 9th lvl spells and +14 BaB.

I really dislike the maneuver refresh mechanic of the swordsage though, but I do want to pick up things like the Shadow Blade feat which requires at least one shadow hand maneuver. It is probably better to take Crusader over Warblade so I will have the entry requirements for higher level devoted spirit maneuvers and stances given by Jade Phoenix.

The wizard levels will probably be Martial wizard & focused specialist in illusion.

So the questions I have are the following:
What kind of feats are good for a gish character? Will I have feats left over to use for higher level Shadow Blade maneuvers/stances?
Is it worth it to take both Shadow Blade and Weapon Finesse?
What kind of spells are good to complement my ToB class (for example, mostly self buffing or just use melee and caster seperately)?
How do I work with the arcane spell failure chance when wearing armor?

And of course, are these builds any good?

Thanks to anyone who could help me with this!

[sleepyphoenixx]

There really isn't much synergy between Shadowcraft Mage and gishing in general.
The gish part wants to buff and then melee while the ScM wants to stay back and use his shadow spells for BFC, summoning and related god-wizard stuff.
The two are pretty much opposite playstyles.

Also Shadow Blade, and dex-based melee in general, functions much better with TWF (or anything that maximizes attacks really). That's a very feat-intensive playstyle though.
You usually get bigger returns by focusing on strength, with a two-handed weapon and Power Attack. The damage is usually higher and the feat investment is much lower, so you can spend more feats on improving your casting.

If you want to gish i'd replace the ScM with Abjurant Champion. That raises your BAB, gives you a few useful gish tricks and also solves the problem of armor/ASF.
If you want to play ScM i'd suggest dropping the gish part entirely and instead taking classes that improve your spellcasting ability. Incantatrix is pretty much the gold standard here, but Mage of the Arcane Order, Archmage, Master Specialist and some other classes along those lines are also valid choices.

Otherwise by splitting your focus like that you'll end up doing neither part of your build that well, which is pretty likely to end up in frustration.
Even if you make the numbers work you'll have to choose between one or the other because you don't have the actions to do both simultaneously.

No matter if you're choosing to gish or ScM in a given round, half your build is basically doing nothing on any given course of action. Specializing on one of those things and focusing on your strengths is a much more effective strategy in D&D.

[Nammen]

Thank you for the response, what you say makes perfect sense. I think I am going to go with this Wizard 3, Master Specialist 4, Shadowcraft Mage 5, Incantatrix 8 then, or maybe try out abjurant champion depending on the rest of my party. Thanks!