Unarmed Swordsage Build Advice

[anastrace]

Heya!

I'm looking to build a unarmed swordsage variant and would love to go the shadow sun ninja route but I have no idea if SSN will continue my unarmed and ac abilities since I'm not a monk. Originally I was thinking SS6/FTR4/SSN10, but I've not played 3.5e in many years so I don't remember how to optimize a character

Thanks for any advice,

[holbita]

It will not stack.

That being said... it may be worth changing those fighter levels for monk levels, start with monk 4 then swordsage so you start choosing from 2nd level maneuvers, then have everything stack. That's literally how I did it when I built the character Monk 4 - Swordsage 6 - Shadow Sun Ninja 10

And for sure your unarmed damage should stack in that case, no DM should say no to that.

[Inevitability]

If you have no monk levels, you gain the AC bonus of a monk whose level equals your Shadow Sun ninja level. In addition, you gain additional uses of the Stunning Fist feat as a monk. (Your non-monk, non-Shadow Sun ninja class levels provide one use per four levels and your monk, and Shadow Sun ninja class levels provide one use per level.)

You do not count your class levels for the purpose of determining when you gain any other monk class features, such as bonus feats, evasion, or other special abilities.

Unarmed Swordsage doesn't give a monklike AC bonus, only unarmed strike progression, so there's nothing this could stack with. An unarmed swordsage 5 / shadow sun ninja 10 would have the unarmed strike of a 5th-level monk, the AC bonus of a 10th-level monk, and 11 stunning fist uses per day (if you have the feat).

[Darg]

Adaptations imply you are going to need to make adaptations. For a close example: the spell casting adaption of swordsage, is it spellcasting progression or maneuver progression? The book doesn't say either way. There is no RAW for adaptations because it's just suggestions for homebrew anyways.

[anastrace]

Cool, thanks everyone! I'll work with my DM on it