PEACH my arcane swordsage

[Dimers]

"Arcane swordsage" gets a brief mention as a concept in the Tome of Battle, with little guidance and no hard rules at all for how to implement it. I know other people have taken a crack at firming it up. I think my version clarifies things better (it should, as verbose as it is), and it definitely fixes some broken or overpowered possibilities.

The brief version: The class runs runs on SLAs with somatic components and ASF, chosen largely from arcane base classes. Most SLAs should be Abjuration/Evocation/Transmutation; there are hard numbers for how many. Most SLAs should be in a range/area/effect appropriate for a swordsage, and again, there are hard numbers for how many. The base abilities are more magic-oriented than those of a vanilla swordsage, while similar in tone.

Spoiler: basic class features, and what they do and don't do for you

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Medium base attack bonus, like a cleric.
Good Reflex and Will saves but a poor Fortitude save, like a bard.
d6 Hit Die.
Proficient in simple weapons and in martial melee weapons (including those that happen to be throwable). Not proficient in any armor or shield. Wearing armor or using a shield interferes with many arcane swordsage class features. Since the arcane swordsage gains no armor proficiency class feature, that can't be traded away to gain a monk's unarmed strike progression.
Skills: 6+Int per level, x4 at 1st level. Adjust the existing class skill list by removing Martial Lore and knowledge (nature) but adding Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana).
AC Bonus (Ex): Starting at 2nd level, you can add your Wisdom modifier as an insight bonus to Armor Class, so long as you wear no armor, use no shield and are unencumbered. This bonus to AC applies even against touch attacks or when you are flat-footed. However, you lose this bonus when you are immobilized or helpless.
Spell Attack Focus (Ex): At 1st level, gain your choice of WF (ranged touch attacks) as a bonus feat, WF (melee touch attacks) as a bonus feat, or the ability to substitute Dexterity for Strength when making melee touch attack rolls. The last option counts as the feat Weapon Finesse for purposes of meeting prerequisites, but if this substitution allows you to gain a benefit that normally applies to all finesse weapons, it instead applies only to melee touch attacks.
Quick to act (Ex): As stated for the vanilla swordsage.
Sense magic (Sp): Starting at 1st level, you may use detect magic a number of times per day equal to two plus half your class level. This is a 0th-level effect with a caster level equal to your class level. Starting at 7th level, you gain an ability to identify items. Using a spell-like arcane swordsage class feature (usually Sense Magic, but possibly a maneuver or stance) to view the item's magical aura for at least 1 minute, you may then end the detection ability early to gain the effects of an identify spell targeting that item (which you don't need to touch). This is a 1st-level arcane effect with a caster level equal to your class level. Sense Magic is not a maneuver or stance; it doesn't count against your maneuvers and stances known, and it doesn't fulfill prerequisites for knowing higher-level effects.
Arcana Focus (Ex): For each different school chosen for Insightful Strike or Defensive Stance, you gain a +2 insight modifier to Spellcraft and Knowledge (arcana) rolls relating to that school's effects.
Insightful Strike (Su): At 4th level, choose one school of magic. When you use an effect of that school which deals hit point damage, against each target, increase the hit point damage by the lower of the spell level or your Wisdom modifier (before a save, if a save can reduce damage). The additional damage is an insight bonus. For effects of that school which deal ability damage/drain or impose negative levels, if that effect successfully gets through any save and SR, the target then takes the lower of the spell level or your Wisdom modifier in negative energy hit point damage. (Not that it's likely to apply, but if such damage applies to an undead target, it's still damage.) If such a spell already deals negative energy hit point damage, what Insightful Strike adds is considered an insight bonus. Each target may take extra damage from your Insightful Strike only once per round. Since this is a supernatural ability, the bonus damage doesn't apply to someone in an antimagic effect. At 12th level, choose a second school for the same benefit.
Evasion (Ex): As stated, except you can't benefit while wearing armor or using a shield.
Defensive Stance (Su): At 8th level, choose one school of magic; you gain a +2 insight bonus to saving throws while in a spell-stance of that school. At 16th level, choose a second school for the same benefit.
Improved evasion (Ex): As stated, except you can't benefit while wearing armor or using a shield.
Dual Arcana (Su): Starting at 20th level, three times per day, you may use two swift-action spell-maneuvers as a single swift action. One of the two, but not both, may be a spell-maneuver made swift by the feat Quicken Spell-Like Ability or a similar effect. Spell-stances don't qualify for Dual Arcana, only spell-maneuvers.

An arcane swordsage learns only spell-maneuvers and spell-stances, not martial maneuvers and martial stances. Spell-maneuvers and spell-stances are spell-like abilities with some atypical traits detailed below.

The feats Martial Study and Martial Stance do exactly what they say they do -- they DON'T give you more spell-maneuvers or spell-stances known, as these belong to no discipline. While the "Adaptation" section in ToB doesn't specify the rules by which you replace maneuvers with spells, this document does, farther down.

Arcane swordsage levels aren't treated as swordsage levels for determining what levels of martial maneuvers you have access to. Since arcane swordsage levels grant no martial maneuvers, no martial stances and no maneuvers from any martial discipline, they contribute nothing toward any such prerequisite of a feat or prestige class. Similarly, because spell schools are not disciplines, arcane swordsage class features grant no benefit from using a martial discipline weapon, and a crown of White Ravens (or the like) can't be used to gain a spell-maneuver for you or any other user. The feats Extra Readied Maneuver and Adaptive Style refer only to "maneuvers", which you do have, so you can benefit from each of these feats in the expected ways.

Arcane swordsages' spell-maneuvers and spell-stances are SLAs with an arcane caster level, as are the two effects in the Sense Magic class feature. This qualifies the arcane swordsage for certain prestige classes and feats as described in Complete Arcane chapter 3. If an arcane swordsage's SLAs qualify her for a prestige class that advances arcane spellcasting or spellcasting in general, the progression advances her caster level, maneuvers known, maneuvers readied, stances known and material component GP cap (see below) as if she had gained more arcane swordsage levels, but does not grant or improve other arcane swordsage class features such as improved evasion or insightful strike. The same applies to classes which can advance casting without any prerequisite, such as human paragon and half-elf paragon.

If a prestige class, feat or other trait would normally grant bonus spells known, including through access to a domain, those spells are not automatically learned as maneuvers/stances but may be selected, even if they wouldn't otherwise be accessible to an arcane swordsage. Once selected, they count as spell-maneuvers or spell-stances (and therefore as arcane SLAs) for you.

One of the feats an arcane swordsage's arcane caster level qualifies you for is Obtain Familiar. Since SLAs are not spells, the share spells and deliver touch spells traits don't benefit you as they would regular casters.

Arcane swordsages have an arcane caster level instead of an initiator level. The base value for this caster level is equal to class level. Unlike with vanilla swordsages' initiator level, this class's effective caster level is NOT raised by half your non-swordsage levels -- if you dip a single level of arcane swordsage at 20th level, you're still only getting level 0 or 1 effects and CL1.

Wisdom is the casting stat for arcane swordsage SLAs. You need a Wisdom score of at least 10 + spell level to learn or use a maneuver or stance. Your Wisdom modifier sets the save DC for spell-maneuvers that don't specify an atypical DC (like that of combust to avoid being lit on fire). All arcane swordsage effects you generate that reference your Intelligence or Charisma score/modifier instead use Wisdom. That includes for esoterica like contact other plane -- not only would you make a Wisdom check instead of an Intelligence check to avoid a penalty, but your Wis would take the hit instead of Int and Cha.

You are not considered to have a spell list, so you have no inherent ability to use spell completion or spell trigger items, even of effects your chosen spell-maneuvers and spell-stances emulate. Similarly, arcane swordsage abilities don't qualify you to activate an eternal wand -- you can't cast arcane spells.

Spoiler: pattern of selection and replacement for maneuvers and stances

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At first level, you gain 6 spell-maneuvers known and one spell-stance known. These must be chosen from among the 0th- and 1st-level arcane spells available to the classes and other sources listed below. The stance is always available to you, but you may ready only four of the six maneuvers at a time. As you gain arcane swordsage levels, you learn more maneuvers and more stances, gain access to higher-level maneuvers, and may ready more maneuvers at any given time, as shown on Table 1-2 on page 16 of the Tome of Battle. You gain spell-maneuvers and spell-stances known only at the rate on this table -- you're unable to gain a spell-maneuver when you take Martial Study, items that grant knowledge of maneuvers don't grant you more spell-maneuvers known, and you're unable to gain a spell-stance when you select Martial Stance (if you even meet its prerequisite).

As with the vanilla swordsage, at 4th level and every even-numbered level thereafter, you may trade out one existing maneuver to replace it with a new one. You may not trade stances in this way. After selecting your new maneuver for that level-up (and the new stance, if you get one that level), you may remove one maneuver known of any level and replace it with a maneuver of any level you can currently access. For purposes of tracking the number of prerequisite maneuvers, the removal and replacement are simultaneous: you can't use the old maneuver to qualify for the new one, but the new one can be used to qualify for existing maneuvers/stances without interruption. The removal and replacement are also simultaneous for purposes of the 80% limit on spell schools and 70% limit on effect shapes (see below).

To learn or use a spell-maneuver or spell-stance, in addition to the Wisdom requirement mentioned above, your class level must be at least [spell levelx2 -1]:
1st level effects (which includes cantrips) require class level 1
2nd level effects requires class level 3
3rd level effects requires class level 5
4th level effects requires class level 7
5th level effects requires class level 9
6th level effects requires class level 11
7th level effects requires class level 13
8th level effects requires class level 15
9th level effects requires class level 17
If you have negative levels, you may lose access to your higher-level maneuvers. In addition to negative levels' usual effects, consider the negative levels to subtract from your class level for purposes of using maneuvers you've learned. This doesn't remove magical effects already activated or stances you've stayed in since before receiving the negative levels.

Spoiler: the qualities and traits of these abilities

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Your spell-maneuvers and spell-stances are spell-like abilities but are not purely mental actions. You must be free to move to activate a maneuver or adopt a stance. Use the standard Concentration check DCs to do so while grappling, swallowed, pinned, entangled, undergoing vigorous or violent motion, or similarly afflicted. The Concentration check is part of using the maneuver or activating the stance, not a separate action. Failure does not cause a maneuver to be expended. You can't use maneuvers or stances at all while paralyzed. Your maneuvers and stances suffer an arcane spell failure chance regardless of whether the emulated spell would have a somatic component; stances check for ASF when you try to adopt them and at the start of each of your turns (before other effects are resolved, if it matters, e.g. because if you're not in a stance then you don't qualify for the Defensive Stance class ability). Your maneuvers and stances don't have any verbal aspect, make no sound other than you moving your body, aren't confounded by deafness and may be used in magical silence. If the emulated spell is sonic, language-dependent, or otherwise described as employing or creating sound, aspects of the last sentence may be overruled, but in any case activating the maneuver or adopting the stance isn't noisy itself. Entering a stance doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity, but using a maneuver does unless its action is swift, immediate or free. You may activate maneuvers defensively to not provoke attacks, with a Concentration check as if they were spells of the equivalent level.

Like spell-maneuvers, spell-stances create spell-like effects. They can be dispelled and the ones that affect other creatures respect SR as normal for the emulated spell. Entering a spell-stance is a swift action that does not provoke attacks of opportunity, even if the corresponding spell would normally be an immediate or free action to cast. The spell-stance lasts indefinitely but ends immediately as if dispelled:

• if you enter another stance, whether or not a spell-stance;
• if you are stunned/paralyzed/asleep/unconscious;
• if actually dispelled ;
• if your arcane spell failure chance triggers;
• if you stop wielding a needed focus; or
• if the emulated spell's effects are expended in a way that would normally end it (as with kiss of draconic defiance or stoneskin).

If the spell-stance has a duration that includes concentration and it can't deal damage, you are constantly treated as if you had been using it for one round and you can actively concentrate on the spell in the normal way to gain further benefits. For example, if you adopt the analyze portal stance, you're constantly aware of the locations and sizes of portals in a 60' cone, and you can spend a standard action concentrating to learn the key or command word of one of them. A damaging concentration spell-stance requires spending an action (typically a standard action) concentrating in order to deal damage. A spell-stance's benefits are suppressed by an antimagic field or similar effect. You also can't change or adopt spell-stances while in an antimagic effect, though you can maintain one so that its benefits resume immediately as soon as you're out of the effect.

A maneuver takes the same amount of time to activate as the emulated spell. A maneuver or stance isn't identifiable as a spell-like effect until it's already in use, so there's no way to counter its activation/adoption. Non-instantaneous SLAs can be dispelled unless the emulated spell says otherwise. SLAs are subject to spell resistance in exactly the same ways as the emulated spells are.

As SLAs, maneuvers and stances don't count as prepared spells or spell slots, so they can't fuel or trigger most special effects. And since they're not spells, they would be invalid for benefits of certain other spells or effects such as arcane fusion, true casting or harmonic chorus.

Activating a spell-maneuver or adopting a spell-stance with an alignment descriptor is an act of matching alignment.

Spoiler: readying and recovering maneuvers

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You ready spell-maneuvers (to a limit of the number in the "Maneuvers Readied" column of Table 1-2) by meditating and ritualistically moving your body for five minutes. Adaptive Style feat reduces the time needed to one full-round action. Readying spells provokes attacks of opportunity; you may ready defensively with a Concentration check (DC 10 + highest-level maneuver you're trying to ready + number of maneuvers to be readied that weren't already readied), provoking no attack if successful. If you are damaged or otherwise negatively affected by an opportunity attack or other triggered action, your attempt to ready maneuvers automatically fails. Each maneuver you ready must be unique -- you can't ready charm monster twice, though you could ready both charm monster and charm person.

Like vanilla swordsages, arcane swordsages may recover an expended spell-maneuver by spending a full-round action to meditate and move with the flow of ambient mana. This does not provoke attacks of opportunity. However, if your attempt to recover a maneuver triggers an action which negatively affects you, the attempt automatically fails.

Both readying and recovering maneuvers requires sensing and interacting with moving mana-currents. Neither can be done while in dead magic or antimagic areas, and they can't be done while benefitting from time stop. The DM may rule there are other very rare effects which would interfere with readying and recovery by blocking the sensing of, or interaction with, ambient mana.

Spoiler: selecting maneuvers and stances

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Spells may be selected from any base class (not prestige class) that has its own list of arcane spells. Spells not appearing on such a base arcane spell list are not selectable. While it's possible to get spells added to a class list in various ways, for selecting arcane swordsage maneuvers and stances, only the base lists are considered. Valid classes:

• bard
• beguiler
• death master
• dread necromancer
• duskblade
• hexblade
• jester
• magewright
• savant
• sorcerer
• warmage
• wizard
• wu jen

In addition, sanctified and corrupt spells may be chosen for maneuvers/stances, and some feats or other traits will add selectable spells as well. If a spell appears at different levels on more than one valid list, you may select it at whichever level you prefer. You may not select a given spell more than once, no matter how many class lists it appears on. Six special cases: (1) A spell being on the savant's divine spell list doesn't make it available to you. (2) A spell being in a divine bard's expanded spell list doesn't make it available to you. (3) Sha'irs are not included because they can only access arcane spells from the sorcerer/wizard list -- the domain spells they have access to are considered divine. (4) Spellthieves aren't included because their spell list is strictly a subset of the sorcerer/wizard list. (5) UA's Generic Spellcaster is excluded because it's not intended for play in the same game with non-generic classes. (6) If your DM wants to let you research a spell effect not on any of these lists, they're welcome to, but they'll have to come up with relevant rules themselves.

Cantrips from valid sources may be selected. They are 1st-level effects for you.

Spells that cost XP, even optionally, may not be selected. Spells may not be selected that have a flat material component cost higher than 10gp per arcane swordsage level, but as usual for SLAs, once you meet that threshold there's no material component cost to activate or adopt the selected maneuver/stance. Spells with a variable or optional cost, such as animate dead, can be selected freely but can only be used in a way that stays within the cost cap. (E.g. a 10th-level arcane swordsage can animate 4-HD skeletons and zombies all day long since her limit is 100gp in "free" material components, but can't use the SLA to animate a 5-HD creature even if she has onyx to spend on it. She'll become able to animate 5-HD creatures when she reaches CL13.) Spells with foci that have a listed cost may be selected, but you must wield the spell's focus while activating the maneuver or benefitting from the stance. Those with an optional focus, such as banishment, may be selected freely but only gain extra benefits if you're wielding the optional focus.

New feat: Enriched Arcana [General]. Prerequisites: Arcane swordsage level 3, Appraise 2 ranks. Benefit: When determining what spell-maneuvers and spell-stances you may select and how they may be used, reduce the material component cost of the emulated spell by 100gp. Special: This feat may be taken more than once, and its effects stack. Each time you take it, it requires a cumulative additional 2 ranks in Appraise.

Some spells use particularly rare or unique material components or foci with no listed cost. Others gain a special benefit from having something extra on hand that has no listed cost, such as scrying's "body part" connection. The DM may choose to deny the selection of such spells as maneuvers/stances, or may require that their use include that rare/unique/special component (which is not usually the case for an SLA).

No spell may be selected that specifically duplicates, mimics or otherwise enables multiple other spells' effects, such as anyspell, shadow conjuration, replicate casting or polymorph any object. Spells that merely inherit properties from other spells are not included in that clause. Occasionally a spell will enable one other magical effect, as with voice of the dragon or heart of air. Those are acceptable because there's no choice about the secondary effect, no multiplicity.

In a similar vein, a spell that has multiple substantially qualitatively different, chooseable variations with each casting can't be selected as a maneuver or stance. Polymorph and shapechange are out since they can generate a wide variety of forms; heroics is out because it allows a wide choice of feats; summon monster is out because you can choose from several creatures at each level; wand modulation is out because you can pick from a vast array of spells; ruby ray of reversal is out because you choose to use it in one of several ways. On the other hand, you can select channeled pyroburst -- it has multiple variations, but those variations are not substantially qualitatively different from each other. Animate dead is similar. Skeletons and zombies aren't substantially qualitatively different as spell results, given that they're both low-HD mindless undead lacking activatable special abilities. And most prismatic spells are fine because their multiple different effects aren't chooseable.

Spells with special qualifications, like necrotic cyst spells, may only be selected as maneuvers if you meet the prerequisites. Spells with unusual components, such as some sanctified spells' sacrifice components, can only be used as maneuvers or stances if you meet the component cost/requirement. Feats and traits that offer unusual access to spells -- again, like Mother Cyst and necrotic cyst spells -- do not automatically add those spells to your maneuvers/stances known; you must select them if you want to use them.

You may not select a modified spell as an SLA. The obvious example is metamagic -- you can't pick "empowered fireball", "fell drain magic missile", "extended greater magic weapon" or the like. But you also can't pick spells that have been modified with optional material components, special holy symbols or similar tricks. You are welcome to select traits that change the parameters of SLAs (for instance with feats like Quicken Spell-Like Ability or Mortalbane). Spells that inherently contain modifiers are selectable, and the modifiers do apply to your use insofar as you qualify for them. For example, any arcane swordsage may select the spell tail slap, and a dragonblooded arcane swordsage gains an additional benefit when using it.

School: At least 80% of your maneuvers and stances, taken together, must be from the Abjuration, Evocation and Transmutation schools. For purposes of meeting the 80% requirement and for purposes of meeting prerequisites for higher-level effects (see below), Universal spells are considered their own separate school, while spells with split schools count as one school or the other, chosen when learned and not changeable later. This 80% rule means that you can know one alternative-school effect at 1st level, a second at level 3, a third at level 7, a fourth at level 11, a fifth at level 15 and a sixth at level 20.

Shape/Effect: At least 70% of your maneuvers (not stances) must be personal, touch, cone, ray, weapon-like effects, or AoEs necessarily centered on you (like fireburst). That means you can know one differently shaped maneuver at level 1, a second at level 2, a third at level 5, a fourth at level 9, a fifth at level 12, a sixth at level 15, and a seventh at level 19.

Prerequisites: 1st-level maneuvers and stances have no prerequisites. To select a level 2 or 3 effect, you must already know one maneuver from the same school. To select a level 4 or 5 effect, two maneuvers of the same school are needed. Three matching maneuvers are needed for a level 6 or 7 effect, four are required for a level 8 effect, and five are needed for a level 9 effect. As with a vanilla swordsage, stances count as maneuvers for purposes of qualifying for future maneuvers/stances.

Combining the restriction on non-approved schools with the prerequisite restriction, you get the result that you can only ever gain high-level effects in one school other than Abj/Evoc/Trans, and then only if you focus on it pretty hard throughout your career. You could dabble in lower- to mid-level effects in multiple alternative schools instead, of course, or just restrict yourself to the three core schools.

A spell-stance should emulate one of the following:

• A personal spell
• A spell that affects a single touched creature, in which case you must be a valid target and the creature affected is always you
• A spell that affects a single touched weapon, in which case you choose one weapon you wield to benefit from the effect when you enter the stance. The stance and spell effect end early if you stop holding the affected weapon for more than a round (returning throwing weapons are fine). You may select a spell that optionally affects multiple pieces of ammunition, but you can't use that option.
• A spell that creates weapons or weapon-like effects which you then wield or which gives you a way to make attacks, such as thunderlance, flame dagger, tail slap or flame whips. Even if the emulated spell normally allows you to hand off the weapon to an ally to use, the stance requires you to be the user. A spell like persistent blade or mordenkainen's sword, while perhaps appropriate as a maneuver, doesn't qualify as a stance because the effect is not wielded by you directly.
• An area effect that continually emanates from the caster, like detect thoughts, joyful noise or body of the sun

To give one example of what DOESN'T work, mislead is not a valid stance because the illusory double doesn't fit one of those categories.

In addition, stance spells must have a level-based variable duration of at least 1 round per caster level or a flat duration of at least 1 minute. Concentration effects qualify as long as their maximum duration qualifies or they have no maximum duration listed.

Finally, a spell chosen for a stance must have a casting time no longer than 1 standard action.

You can re-activate a stance you're currently in, at the usual cost of a swift action. The previous benefits end and you gain new benefits as if casting the emulated spell afresh. For instance, a magic weapon stance could be refreshed to affect a different weapon, or you could gain new illusory duplicates with mirror image.

Spoiler: my own meta-analysis, including a hot take on Adaptive Style

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Problems possibly solved or avoided:
No more unclear definitions or vague values
Many specific abusable spells are unselectable for various reasons
No XP costs are removable (those spells can't even be selected)
Only relatively minor GP costs are removable
No metamagic possible, so metamagic reducers are irrelevant
Breadth of effects limited by nixing single picks that duplicate or cascade to wide varieties of effects
No nabbing unusually low-level spells from PrCs (like trapsmith haste)
No nabbing off-list spells by somehow making them count as arcane
Can't get more spell-maneuvers or spell-stances known, for this class or any other
Multiclassing doesn't increase arcane swordsage CL or maneuver access
Can't use time stop to recover or ready maneuvers, including time stop itself
Many broken or OP interactions are avoided because maneuvers/stances are SLAs rather than spells

Problems (well, maybe-problems) still extant:
Lots of at-will 'win buttons' or extreme powerups still available, as can be expected for 9th-level casting from a broad list
Didn't resolve the issue of cherrypicking best spells from schools other than Abj/Evoc/Trans ... put a couple strict limits on them, but didn't shut them down completely
Even without PrCs' spell lists or non-arcane spells being made arcane, possible selection is still pretty broad

Problems created:
Change in expected role? This arcane swordsage is substantially better for buffing, BFC and status removal/prevention than it is for actually dealing damage. And it's become less gish-like and more full-caster.
On a related note, evasion doesn't fit as well as it would on a vanilla swordsage.
Somewhat more SAD than before. Dex and Con are good but if you choose spells wisely and play tactically you can get by fine with just Wis.
I went away from the book's vague design suggestion in making rays, cones, weapon-like effects and centered effects just as valid as personal and touch effects. Might not accord with others' ideas of what a swordsage should do.
For better or worse, multiclassing is effectively discouraged; it takes away from caster level and spell access. This arcane swordsage writeup has access to very few PrCs compared to a spellcaster, and of course not every possibly selectable PrC is desirable or worthwhile to a given character. So in a lot of cases, the build will be 100% arcane swordsage, start to finish, which strikes me as odd for 3.5 D&D and maybe a bit dull.

Some things DMs should pay attention to:
The list of classes (and other sources, e.g. sanctified/corrupt) from which spells can be drawn. Maybe you don't want bard or beguiler spells available to an arcane swordsage, for instance, or you feel that dread necromancer and death master spells don't fit the game's theme. Perhaps you feel the breadth is outright abusive and would prefer to limit it to just spells shared by sorcerer and wizard. Or maybe you're looking for a high-powered game and think trapsmith and Teflammar Shadowlord spell lists are A-OK. Let your players know about any changes up-front.

The feat Adaptive Style. As written, it seems like a drastic power-up, with one valid reading allowing you to refresh your entire expended loadout with a single action. But you could define "expended" as a separate category from "readied" or "unreadied" and rule that Adaptive Style is unable to change the "expended" state. In that case, Adaptive Style still has a useful function without going overboard. It'd let you swap out any readied maneuvers you don't currently need for unreadied maneuvers you do need, with expended maneuvers effectively reducing how many swaps you can make -- a good way to quickly adapt to changing circumstances without bypassing the usual limitation on maneuver recovery. (Adapt is part of the name; Do The Same Thing Again is not.) And in fact that's how I assumed the feat functioned before reading Playground posts and re-examining the feat's exact wording. Said wording is less than crystal-clear. There's room for interpretation.

Some SLAs' effects require caster level checks. Since arcane swordsages can effectively use their SLAs at will (with minor recovery time), I'd encourage DMs to allow "taking 20" on such caster level checks under the normal circumstances for taking 20 on skill checks: no threats or distractions, no penalty for failure, twenty times the usual amount of time that would be needed to activate and recover the maneuver. For example, given 4 minutes without pressure or danger, you can assume an arcane swordsage will roll a 20 on a check for dispel magic.

If you want your players to be able to research off-list spells to learn as maneuvers/stances, you'll have to come up with rules for that yourself.

Other:
All arcane swordsages are going to be heavy in some combination of Abjuration, Evocation and Transmutation. The ones that also try to focus on some other school may end varying wildly from each other, including in what Abj/Evoc/Trans spells they take to support their chosen specialty. Diviners, necromancers, illusionists and enchanters would approach problems in very different ways. I'd love to see some loadouts for specialists.

[Dimers]

Hoping to get more conversation moving ... Also hoping the initial post wasn't too much of an infodump, but it probably was

Why do I even think arcane swordsage needs defining? Why not use another class instead, or just ignore it?

Spoiler: why indeed

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Partly because it's nice to have a conversation with people in the Playground, who are very interested and very knowledgeable about something I enjoy. I always love seeing what y'all come up with.

Partly "because it's there". Ever since I ran across the concept I've been wondering how it'd work and what the implications are ... I want to investigate it, understand it.

Partly because the other "at-will magic" classes are underwhelming and/or oddly constrained. Truenamer is an interesting concept but is hard to make able to contribute a fair share in level-appropriate challenges. Warlock's alignment and fluff restrictions don't work with a lot of character concepts or campaigns, and it too needs some optimization to address level-appropriate stuff. I don't have much experience with the binder (never actually played one) but its fluff can be problematic and it doesn't seem to be able to handle a wide variety of situations in any given day (plus it needs advance knowledge to pick out appropriate vestiges for anything but the most general situations). Incarnate is flexible but not strong, and as you invest more in it, it creates extra problems by blocking off magic item slots, which is just a completely weird restriction.

Partly because it's nice to have a big external project to work on -- keeps me from being bored or just spinning my wheels. Clarifying something so ill-defined and making sure it's valuable-but-not-OP is certainly a big enough project.

I think I've made a good start here but there are definitely still areas to explore. My number one question ... is it really better to have the maneuvers be SLAs (with somatic components and ASF) instead of just flat-out spells? Actual spells would change a lot of interactions:

• V and M components would suddenly be a thing. I'd been imagining swordsage magic as mostly just movement plus focused intention. Maybe that's not a common idea.
• Counterspelling would be possible for both the swordsage and her opponents.
• Metamagic could be applied, thereby also opening up metamagic reducers.
• Spells that only affect other spells, like true casting and arcane fusion, would become worthwhile picks.
• Waaaaaay more PrCs would be possible/worthwhile.
• A single feat (arcane strike from CW) would make gishing a breeze, given how many 9th-level spell slots an arcane swordsage can spend.
• ... or at least it might once you clarify how maneuvers count as spell slots, which is a whole other mess.
• Similarly, we'd need to find wording for how maneuvers related to spells known and spells prepared.

In general, using maneuvers as spells instead of SLAs gives the arcane swordsage a lot more points of interaction with other mechanics, which makes for a lot more unintended consequences. It feels like that change would also make other T2s look bad, which is not a thing I'm after here.

Any thoughts?