Help with TWF swordsage based on a videogame character

[Thalantyr]

Hi guys!

I'm preparing a character for a Rappan Athuk campaign, loosely inspired on Akali, a character from League of Legends. If you don't know who is her this can help: Akali Champion Spotlight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-s2YVbRP8I). I want her to be a highly mobile, high single DPS character. I have heard that Rappan Athuk have a fair share of undead, so I want to address that too.

Level: we start at level 3
Rulebooks allowed: Dms guide, players handbook, monster manual, PH2, tob, complete adventurer - divine - warrior -arcane, spell compendium, magic item compendium, boev, boed, unearthed arcana, eberron and forgotten realms campaign settings and some more random FO books.
Stats: 32 point buy.
Starting gold: 2.700

My build so far:
Human swordsage 3
Str 10, Dex 18, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 8
Feats: two weapon fighthing, weapon finesse, shadow blade

Stances: island of blades, stance of clarity

Maneuvers:
shadow hand: Clinging Shadow Strike, shadow blade technique, cloak of deception, shadow haunt
tiger claw: Wolf Fang Strike
diamond mind: moment of perfect mind, Sapphire Nightmare Blade, Emerald Razor

Items: cloak of resistance +1, masterwork daggers and chain shirt.

Any help is appreciated!

[AnimeTheCat]

Hi guys!

I'm preparing a character for a Rappan Athuk campaign, loosely inspired on Akali, a character from League of Legends. If you don't know who is her this can help: Akali Champion Spotlight (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-s2YVbRP8I). I want her to be a highly mobile, high single DPS character. I have heard that Rappan Athuk have a fair share of undead, so I want to address that too.

Level: we start at level 3
Rulebooks allowed: Dms guide, players handbook, monster manual, PH2, tob, complete adventurer - divine - warrior -arcane, spell compendium, magic item compendium, boev, boed, unearthed arcana, eberron and forgotten realms campaign settings and some more random FO books.
Stats: 32 point buy.
Starting gold: 2.700

My build so far:
Human swordsage 3
Str 10, Dex 18, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 8
Feats: two weapon fighthing, weapon finesse, shadow blade

Stances: island of blades, stance of clarity

Maneuvers:
shadow hand: Clinging Shadow Strike, shadow blade technique, cloak of deception, shadow haunt
tiger claw: Wolf Fang Strike
diamond mind: moment of perfect mind, Sapphire Nightmare Blade, Emerald Razor

Items: cloak of resistance +1, masterwork daggers and chain shirt.

Any help is appreciated!

On a personal level, I don't particularly care for Stance of Clarity and Island of Blades and prefer to go with Blood in the Water (because you're dual wielding Daggers... you should be critting a fair bit) and Child of Shadows. Concealment is way more useful for defense than +2 AC in most cases and flanking can usually be done fairly efficiently without having to use Island of Blades, though if you know your DM and your games and disagree that's fine. I'm just speaking from my experience.

For your maneuvers known, Sudden Leap is PERFECT for a high maneuverability concept character, and I think it could replace clinging shadow strike (especially if you take Child of Shadow over Stance of Clarity). Next, I think I would replace Shadow Blade Technique with something from the Desert Wind school, probably Burning Blade. You suspect Undead, and one of the more common Undead traits is resistance to Cold damage. This doesn't mean that most undead are weak to fire damage, just that the bonus damage you get from your maneuver is more likely to have full effect.

At this point, I don't think you can have 3 level 2 maneuvers. From level 2 to level 3 you only gain one maneuver known and you don't get to retrain a maneuver until level 3. So you should probably choose one of those maneuvers to know and replace the other two with level 1 maneuvers. Wind Stride and Stone Bones wouldn't be bad, or you could pick up the two above I mentioned and keep the two I suggested to replace. However, at level 4 when you can replace a level 1 maneuver with a level 2 and you get an additional level 2 maneuver, I think you should pick up Action Before Thought, Fire Riposte, Flashing Sun, Mountain Hammer, Stone Vise, or either of the Tiger Claw strikes at level 2.

[Mr Adventurer]

Your base damage is 1d4+4 in your main hand, 1d4+2 in your off hand.

Is it worth spending a standard action to make a touch attack to deal 1d4+4 damage at third level? It might be - but I'd look at trading Emerald Razor for something else that will help you more, until you have stronger attacks.

[Silvercrys]

Swordsage is a good fit for Akali, yeah, and your allowed books give you a lot of leeway depending on what level you think you'll reach.

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I'll echo Sudden Leap as the premier movement maneuver at low levels. It just works.

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Depending on what level you're looking to end on, you might want to consider prestiging into Crinti Shadow Marauder, it has easier prereqs than Telflammar Shadowlord and gives you a couple of Sudden Strike dice and Shadow Pounce at character level 10 at the cost of losing maneuver progression for five levels.

But once you hit level 12 and get Shadow Stride you'll be able to use Cloak of Deception to turn invisible, then use Shadow Stride to teleport next to someone and get a full attack with your Sudden Strike dice, then use Wolf Fang Strike for two more attacks. If you keep Shadow Jaunt you can maybe get another full attack as a standard action but most DMs will limit Shadow Pounce to 1/round.

If your game is probably ending before level 15 or so it isn't really worth it, though. It also requires Stealthy and Mounted Combat, which eats up most of your feats and you won't get Dex to damage until higher level.

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You can do a facsimile of Shadow Pounce by taking 2 levels of Monk and then taking the Sun School and Snap Kick feats, though. Sun School makes Shadow Jaunt even better since you can teleport next to someone and still get your attack, but you don't qualify for it until level 6 (Base attack bonus +4 and Flurry of Blows are the prereqs). So you can take two levels of Monk, then another level of Swordsage and get Sun School at level 6. Snap Kick gives you an extra unarmed strike whenever you make an attack for any reason, but it requires Base Attack +6 so you don't qualify until your level 9 feat, I believe. You could also get an extra 2nd level maneuver total this way, at the cost of one maneuver known overall (your second level one at the moment), by taking Monk for your first 2 levels then taking Swordsage 1 because you can then take a 2nd level maneuver at Swordsage 2 instead of having to wait until Swordsage 3.

Also Adaptive Style is a feat tax for Swordsages, it allows you to recover all of your maneuvers as a full-round action instead of having to recover them one at a time. You can't really fit it into your build as-is, but if you dip Monk and take the Sleeping Tiger style from the SRD/Unearthed Arcana you get Weapon Finesse and Improved Initiative as bonus feats, freeing a feat for Adaptive Style. You also get a +2 bonus to Hide checks, which isn't nothing.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm

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Crinti Shadow Marauder is from Shining South (it's a Forgotten Realms book).

Sun School is in Complete Warrior.

Snap Kick and Adaptive Style are from Tome of Battle.

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Edit: you can get away with only taking 1 level of Monk because you really just need Flurry of Blows, but it doesn't hurt your initiator level or base attack bonus to take the second level and gives you Improved Initiative, so it's up to you.

[rrwoods]

Too many level 2 maneuvers there. Building a level 3 character essentially entails building a level 1 character and leveling it up twice; thus only one of your maneuvers known can be level 2 right now. Thankfully, at next level you get to learn an additional maneuver AND trade one out, and the one you trade it for can be of a different level.

That said, Clinging Shadow Strike is one of the few maneuvers that get you extra damage at level 1 so I think it’s important for now. Trade it out later once you have better options.

I really love Akali as a Swordsage, I think the class fits her kit perfectly. High damage Tiger Claw strikes for her Q and R, concealment and invisibility for her W, mobility maneuvers for her E and R. Hell you could even splash a Desert Wind maneuver in there if you wanted to represent Ignite. Good choice :)

[RNightstalker]

Shadow Blade will count for Weapon Finesse so you can save a feat there and put it into something else. You might want to consider Improved Initiative instead.

How high level are you planning on going?

[Mr Adventurer]

Shadow Blade will count for Weapon Finesse so you can save a feat there and put it into something else. You might want to consider Improved Initiative instead.

How high level are you planning on going?

If you do that though your AB will be real bad. What, +3 to hit at 3rd level?

[RNightstalker]

If you do that though your AB will be real bad. What, +3 to hit at 3rd level?

Yeah misread that one. Good looking.