Unarmed Swordsage//Fighter Help

[JNAProductions]

See title. I'm pretty set on the class combination, though MAYBE I could be talked out of fighter.

Anyway, does the playground have advice?

[John Longarrow]

Skip taking the "Unarmed Swordsage adaptation. Use 2 levels of fighter to grab both Improved Unarmed Strike and Superior Unarmed Strike (Fighter 1 / Fighter 2 bonus feats) so your damage scales. This lets you keep your wisdom to AC while in light armor. This really makes for an effective unarmed combatant without the horrible AC issues many monk builds run into (barring heavy investment in magic items).

Figure out what feats you want and what levels you want them at. Top of your list should be
Shadow Blade (to go along with Shadowhand as your discipline)
Weapon finesse if you are going high dex
Levels in Ranger for the TWF tree
Weapon Specialization with unarmed strike

Because of the feats you can take you should be able to pull off a better to hit than a monk of the same level while doing more damage after about lvl 4 or so. Toss in having armor as an option and your AC should be better to, along with comparable or better HPs.

[JNAProductions]

What sorts of Stances and Maneuvers would you suggest?

Edit: And thank you!

[Lormador]

The light armor thing may or may not matter that much depending on the level of magic available for the campaign and the availability of special materials.

If it's feasible for you to acquire a Mithril Breastplate, then the light armor use is going to be valuable, since you can enchant this up to a +6 bonus fairly soon.

If not, the best armor you're going to wear is a chain shirt, which at +4 is the same bonus you'd get from the Mage Armor spell your buddies should be providing for you.

Using the fighter dip for these two feats is an interesting idea, and you would be able to magic up this chain shirt and/or mithril breastplate in the future, but there are other things you could do with a whole 2 levels in a dip that would pay off in different ways.

One homebrew class my friends and I noticed awhile ago is Sublime Rogue, originally posted (to my knowledge) on the minmax boards (my post count is still too low to post links).

I DMed a campaign with a player piloting one of these things and we came to the following conclusions about how the slightly overpowered class should be adjusted.

1) Skilled Recovery should be removed
2) Change maneuver recovery method to match Swordsage
3) Remove maneuver recovery when killing via SA damage
4) Reduce maneuvers readied by 1 across the board

I don't know why you're interested in Unarmed Swordsage + Fighter combos, but if you're trying to build a sneaky and mobile combatant, the Sublime Rogue deserves attention. It's a chassis that delivers what you're looking for without a lot of fancy dipping (as much as I love fancy dipping, others aren't so into it and this quality class needs some promotion).

The main idea here is that you kind of nova with maneuvers. Once you're in position for the deadly strike, you initiate one maneuver as a boost, initiate one strike that grants a full attack, and throw one into Sneak Attack. With reasonable feat and item choices, along with a bit of buff magic, you get eye-popping damage. For the rest of the battle, you're pretty much done. You have few maneuvers left.

I think this fits with the original intended flavor of the rogue perfectly: very dangerous when set up properly with the element of surprise, but unable to just stay out there on the front lines dishing it out like that.

The original designer of the class wanted to push it a bit more, giving the rogue the ability to Tumble/Acrobatics check around the battlefield (recovering Thrashing Dragon maneuvers with Skilled Recovery). There are various ways to make other skill checks as free actions, like Sleight of Hand, and get maneuvers back from that as well. One could use this stuff to fuel the maneuver novas, and that didn't seem right to my group.

[JNAProductions]

I wasn't planning on being super sneaky.

[John Longarrow]

Biggest advantage I can see with dipping fighter besides the feats is access to weapon specialization. This averages out the damage difference between Superior Unarmed Strike and a Monks progression.

Added bonus is one level in fighter (or a few other classes) gives access to all martial weapons. Few things are more fun with an unarmed combatant build than running around with a bow shooting at things. This isn't because your lethal with the bow, its because you can always deal with those who do get too close pretty easily.

[Godskook]

Skip taking the "Unarmed Swordsage adaptation. Use 2 levels of fighter to grab both Improved Unarmed Strike and Superior Unarmed Strike (Fighter 1 / Fighter 2 bonus feats) so your damage scales. This lets you keep your wisdom to AC while in light armor. This really makes for an effective unarmed combatant without the horrible AC issues many monk builds run into (barring heavy investment in magic items).

"By RAW" your Swordsage AC bonus still works in light armor, although how cheesy that is, is up to your DM.

(Quotes because geez, that section really wasn't meant to be RAW in the first place....)

[Biskup]

I will pin my question to this topic, not to create another, similar one:

My unarmed swordsage is currently on 6th lvl. It's semi SRD / semi homebrew (monks unarmed dmg progression, but keeps light armor proff with Wis to AC bonus). Skills and AC/AB etc are not the problem, but I would like to add more versality to him. That's why I am thinking about dipping few (up to 4)levels to other class. I crave more feats, so I consider either Fighter or Martial Rogue for those reasons. MRogue seems fine, as PC will get lots of skill points (and it's skill monkey) + few utility options like trap finding etc. Feats are also strong point here. On the other hand fighter gets weapons and armor prof, which are nice, but I dont think those will be utilised. Important thing in Fighter is Fort save, which currently sucks on my PC. Rogue would boost Reflex stat, which is not a problem atm.

And hints? or maybe completly other class that would share multiple feats spread across low amount of lvls?

[Crake]

"By RAW" your Swordsage AC bonus still works in light armor, although how cheesy that is, is up to your DM.

(Quotes because geez, that section really wasn't meant to be RAW in the first place....)

Yeah, I was gonna mention this myself. The adaptation section merely sayd that the swordsage loses their light armor proficiency, but that's entirely irrelevant if you have armor with no ACP.

Really, considering that all you get in exchange is monk unarmed damage, and no monk bonus AC (the monk gets +1 AC every 5 levels) I think it's fitting that you can still use light armor, if you either a) can afford armor with no ACP, or b) invest in the light armor proficiency feat to avoid penalties.


I will pin my question to this topic, not to create another, similar one:

My unarmed swordsage is currently on 6th lvl. It's semi SRD / semi homebrew (monks unarmed dmg progression, but keeps light armor proff with Wis to AC bonus). Skills and AC/AB etc are not the problem, but I would like to add more versality to him. That's why I am thinking about dipping few (up to 4)levels to other class. I crave more feats, so I consider either Fighter or Martial Rogue for those reasons. MRogue seems fine, as PC will get lots of skill points (and it's skill monkey) + few utility options like trap finding etc. Feats are also strong point here. On the other hand fighter gets weapons and armor prof, which are nice, but I dont think those will be utilised. Important thing in Fighter is Fort save, which currently sucks on my PC. Rogue would boost Reflex stat, which is not a problem atm.

And hints? or maybe completly other class that would share multiple feats spread across low amount of lvls?

Wait, hold on, are you a single classed character? Two slashes like you have in the title are generally used to imply gestalt, not multiclassing, just for future reference. Edit: Saw that this wasn't the OP, so nvm that

As for "increasing versatility". More feats will almost universally do nothing for you in that regard. Losing out on swordsage maneuvers in exchange for feats will almost certainly do the exact opposite most likely.

At 6th level as a swordsage you have potential access to the following abilities thanks to being a swordsage: The ability to teleport 50ft as a standard action, access to greater invisibility for 1 round as a swift action, as well as a stance that grants you +2d6 sneak attack, the ability to attack someone vs their touch AC instead of their regular AC, the ability to deal fire damage, a stance that makes you resistant, and eventually immune to fire, a stance which grants you scent (not to be underestimated), the ability to leap as far as your jump check allows in a swift action, the ability to ignore hardness and damage reduction with bonus damage, the ability to substitute your concentration check for any one of your saves.

Honestly the list goes on, but I won't paste practically every maneuver/stance between level 1-3 that a swordsage has access to. Now, if you were to drop up to 4 levels of swordsage, you would only have access to, at most, 2nd level maneuvers, if you placed your swordsage levels at the end to take advantage of the increased initiator level, but, much like casting, losing initiator levels sucks, because it puts you behind the curve.

I suppose the question is: What do you think feats can do for you in terms of increasing your versatility? How many extra feats do you want/need? And can these be gained in other ways (such as flaws)?

[Biskup]

Well, loosing initiator level sucks certainly - I am aware of that. My idea is so that my PC will go for tripping expert (already is Jotunbrund-ed human) + feats like spinning PUNCH (cos kicking is for ladies ;) ), improved faint etc all requires slot. Feats are a little of problem right now... Im not saying this PC is limited. Actually it's one of best PCs I made so far, and I am playing RPG for like 15 years. Problem is, that 3.5 is so wide that it's difficult to know and remember every interesting feat/class/spell etc.

[edit]
I missed that one: Now, if you were to drop up to 4 levels of swordsage, you would only have access to, at most, 2nd level maneuvers,

I do not want to swap Swordsage levels to any other. I am thinking about going (up) to 4 levels starting 6th into other class. So 1-6 are Unarmed Swordsage levels, then 7-10th would be... other class. Still, as mentioned before, this is just my idea, not sure if this make sense.

[danielxcutter]

What sorts of Stances and Maneuvers would you suggest?

Edit: And thank you!

Depends on what you want to do. Do you want to decimate your enemies with a whirlwind of strikes? Then Diamond Mind and Tiger Claw are good choices. Does turning your foe's attacks back on them and throwing people around appeal to you? Then Setting Sun is pretty good. Or maybe you like to attack under the cover of darkness. In that case, Shadow Hand is the one for you. Dancing around like a flickering flame and imbuing your weapons with fire sound interesting? Then consider Desert Wind. And if you just want to hit really, really hard, then I recommend Stone Dragon.