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View Full Version : Help me continue my elven swordsage dude!



Zephyros
2007-12-02, 06:39 PM
Soooo things are that we got at lvl 6. And I wander what feat to pick right now. I always hear that Adaptive Style is pretty good choice at that level, but it seems a bit dull of a pick to me. I was thinkin about going for the Elusive Target chain, but I am not sure. So I want your help. Right now I already have TWF (which scales along with iteratives so its done already) Shadow blade and Weapon finesse. My stats are 14 21 14 14 18 10 (rolled pretty good :smallcool: )

Sooo fellow playgrounders thank you in advance...

ps: I heading for bloodclaw master if that has any importance and I am wielding kukris (dm ruled that I can use them with shadow blade :smallbiggrin: )

Shades of Gray
2007-12-02, 07:26 PM
From what I've gathered from my party's Swordsage, Adaptive Style is THE best Swordsage feat. Shadow Blade is another of his favorites, but he didn't go for the TWF, lousy rotten spiked chain wielding...

deadseashoals
2007-12-02, 07:52 PM
You really need Adaptive Style. It allows you to get back all of your expended maneuvers with one action, meaning you can actually occasionally reuse them in a tough battle. The bit about being able to change your maneuvers around is just a nice extra compared to getting them all back at once.

Reel On, Love
2007-12-02, 07:54 PM
Adaptive Style is really important, both for when you run out of maneuvers in combat and for when you need utility maneuvers: you swap your combat maneuvers out for utility ones (like Mountain Hammer and Shadow Jaunt), and then swap them back out when you're done, in a round rather than five minutes. Take the hell out of that feat.

The Elusive Target chain isn't going to do anything very useful for you, and is a three-feat investment (so you'd have to wait a while to get Elusive Target)--unitl level 12, in fact.

What you want to do is take Adaptive Style now, and then take Gloom Razor at 12th. After that, well, Extra Readied Maneuver is nice.

For Bloodclaw Master, go Swordsage 7/BCM 2/Swordsage +X. That way you pick Searing Blade up at Sws 7, take a 3rd or 4th level Tiger Claw maneuver (they're not very good) at BCM 1, nothing at BCM 2, and then use Swordsage 8 to get both Pouncing Charge and (by swapping an older maneuver out) Dancing Mongoose. Now you can charge with 8 attacks and +DEX, WIS, and STR (in order of importance) to damage on each. Well, +WIS assuming you took Insightful Strike(Tiger Claw), which you should have. :P


If you're asking yourself "why Gloom Razor? It doesn't look that great," it's because you can keep triggering it off of itself and off of your stances/maneuvers.
Lingering Gloom: this is triggered by your Child of Shadow stance, which brings up a miss chance as you move up and attack (i.e. with Pouncing Charge). And once you're invisible to them, they get a 50% miss chance, which means that you can keep triggering this off of itself if you want to use your swift actions.
Moving Shadows: If you deal damage with your enemy and move at least 10 feet during your turn... which is easy, with things like Pouncing Charge and Wolf Fang Strike, plus maneuvers you use when you can't full attack, like Insightful Strike or Rabid Wolf Strike... you can treat them as flatfooted against the first attack you make next round. This allows you to use a bunch of Shadow Hand maneuvers that require that they be flat-footed, if you took them.
Shadow Slip: if you hit them with a melee attack while flanking, make a DC 20 tumble check; succeed and you get to move into any square adjacent to them. So pick one that's 10 feet away: this triggers Moving Shadows. This has synergy with both Island of Blades and Child of Shadow stances: if you put Island of Blades up, flanking them is ridiculously easy; if you flank without it, have Child of Shadow up, and that 10 feet of movement will trigger Child of Shadow's concealment, allowing you to full attack and still get the benefits of Child of Shadow! It also triggers Moving Shadows, which again makes them flatfooted against your first attack.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-12-02, 08:01 PM
Seconded on Gloom razor. The Hand of Death (or something like that) Shadow Hand maneuver more or less means you've won the fight against most enemies not immune to paralysis, and being able to trigger it easily means lots of easy XP.

Reel On, Love
2007-12-02, 08:06 PM
Seconded on Gloom razor. The Hand of Death (or something like that) Shadow Hand maneuver more or less means you've won the fight against most enemies not immune to paralysis, and being able to trigger it easily means lots of easy XP.

The DC isn't high enough for it to mean you've "more or less... won the fight". But it does make using it easy.

Azerian Kelimon
2007-12-02, 08:10 PM
Once you start piling up enhancements to WIS, it does smell of gorgonzola. Of course, that can be the cause of slight one-trick-poneyism, but that also applies to uberchargers.