Unarmed Swordsage ECL12

[Nosta]

So I am Going To Be in a New Game Hosted By A Good Friend of Mine
The Game is 38 Point-Buy and To make it more We Rolled To see what special Race/Template we'd Get For Free

well I Rolled Half-Dragon(I am ok with this) comes with the Draconic breath feat for Free

But we had to Roll After picking Are class and since I wanted A fantasy Martial Artists I choose The Unarmed Variant of the swordsage

so Got a Few questions

1st: How Should I Spread My Stats
2nd: What Martial Styles Should I Rely on (I feel Like Shaow-hand and Tiger Claw)
3rd: What should My Feats Be: Would Beast strike Be worth it
4th: Could I pull off a Good unarmed/Natural Attacker using The Half-Dragon Template and the unarmed swordsage class

[Rebel7284]

Do you have to stay Swordsage for all 12 levels?

There are a number of directions you could go with.
- Entangling Exhalation gives you a fun battlefield control opening and you can combine with Quicken Breath.
- Darkstalker gives you more stealth abilties.
- Superior Unarmed Strike, Improved Natural Attack, Beast Strike (only if you are likely to be enlarged a lot, otherwise other feats boost your monk attacks by more than 1d4) all boost damage output.
- Adaptive Style can be a nice backup if your DM tends to have long combats.
- Multiattack, Snap Kick, Rapid Strike for a ton of bonus attacks, which may actually hit due to the +8 Strength

While you mentioned that the class is set in stone, is the race? taking something large would give you wings.

For example, the Anthropomorphic Baleen Whale from savage species has 3 Monsterous Humanoid HD and 0 LA. Half dragon would convert those to d12s and give you flight. :) Half Minotaur from dragon magazine is +1LA and also makes you large.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I'd go Str 26 (18+8), Dex 14, Con 16 (14+2), Int 10 (8+2), Wis 16, Cha 10 (8+2).

I would go for a mix primarily consisting of Setting Sun, Shadow Hand, and Tiger Claw. Shadow Hand has a lot of boosts and utility, Tiger Claw has the Mongoose boosts and some decent maneuvers and stances (Hunter's Sense is fantastic for out of combat), and Setting Sun can be especially good with a really high strength score.

Put your free Half-Dragon template on a Human for a bonus feat, get Multiattack and Improved Multiattack (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/feats.htm#improvedMultiattack). That allows your full attack to be two claws (primary) plus an unarmed strike (secondary, full attack bonus, half Str to damage) plus a bite (secondary, full attack bonus, half Str to damage). Get Assassin's Stance asap to add sneak attack to every hit. You won't even need Beast Strike. Once your BAB is 6+ you'll want to make Unarmed Strikes your primary attack so they get iterative attacks, and switch the claws to secondary.

This is absolutely doable, this will be an amazing character.

[Sagetim]

Well, since you already have Half Dragon, you could be a ridiculous person and take Half Giant as your base race. Because Half Dragon in 3.5 is a template, after all. Half Giant is a +1 ECL race, but among it's fancy shenanigans is Powerful Build, allowing you to count as large when it benefits you. Like having Wings.

it would also bump your racial strength bonus up to +10 total. While you don't get more feats at level 1, you don't necessarily need them. Adaptive Style, Superior Unarmed Strike, and the ones whose name I forget that give you 1 more maneuver prepared and more known may well be all you really need.

Shadow Hand is a great school, but if you want a style that benfits from your Strength bonus being ridiculous, then look into Stone Dragon. Remember that the DC's for various different styles are each linked to a different attribute, so anything that relies on Strength for it's DC is going to wind up being hardest for your targets to resist. It's also where the Mountain Hammer chain of strikes lives, and those are magical and fantastical and wonderful because they're EX abilities that ignore DR.

You could probably get some mileage out of Crushing Weight of the Mountain stance, since your strength modifier is going to be through the roof, and taking the feats to get improved grapple might actually be worth it if unarmed sword sage doesn't get that already (I'm not actually familiar with the AFC).

Giant's Stance from Stone Dragon could also be funny, because it lets you act as if you were one size category bigger. So you act like a large creature when it benefits you, then act one size category bigger (huge) from th stance...or to put it another way, the stance makes you act large, and powerful build lets you act Huge when it benefits you (so you only take a -1 to ac, but get a +8 to grappling, etc).

Overwhelming and Irresistible Mountain Strike seem like they would also be your friend, with your dc on the strikes being high enough that the target has a real chance to fail their save and lose their move/standard action.

Now, that said, if you don't get to ignore the ECL + from Half dragon, then adding in Half Giant is going to hurt, because you'll have a total of +4 ECL. That's the downside to stacking a template onto an ECL race. If you get to hand wave the 3 ECL from half dragon, then you'll basically be starting at level 11 instead of 12, and get wings that you can fly with in the trade off. Assuming you have to deal with the full ECL though, you'll be level 8 in Sword Sage,1 shy of having level 5 maneuvers.

Also, if you take the extra ecl hit and start with wings, you can get a lot more mileage out of Bounding Assault from Diamond Mind, for example, than you would out of Searing Charge. Searing Charge gives you some dice of fire damage (and easily resisted damage type) and it's main benefit is that you can fly during the charge you make as part of the maneuver. But if you can already fly, the double move from bounding assault is better, since you aren't adding in damage for an easy to resist type like fire.

Shadow Garotte, by the way, is going to be your friend if you can fly. Because it's a ranged touch attack. Which gives you an attack option if you need to wing away from melee for a bit, or if someone starts getting away from you somehow.

Edit: Oh, and you'll have more than 25 strength. Look at Awesome Blow. As I recall, it requires 25 strength and maybe some other stuff, but you can punch people so hard they go flying.

[Dagroth]

Just don't forget that Stone Dragon maneuvers require you to be standing, not flying.

[Nosta]

can some one show me good build chart for this?