How to make a Sword Saint

[PIXIE DUST]

Ok so I was looking at the sword saint and thought, this looks cool! Then I wondered... just how would yoh make this work...

Iajutsu Strike looks cool but ... I have No.idea how to get it to be effective. So what types of ideas do u guys have? Lets say 20pb with all paizo open for use.

[My Self]

Uh...

Well, there's the damage, which is a full round to not actually do that much. You basically trade all your iteratives for Sneak Attack.

On top of that, there's the deafen and shaken abilities.

So maybe if you stacked Cornugon Smash, Power Attack, and the ability to make him shaken, you might be able to make your first enemy frightened as a full-round action?

I feel like it's a waste of an action to Iajutsu Strike, though.

[Protoman]

If you wanna keep the sword saint archetype instead of going for any other build that you envision for your character idea:

Use a sharpened combat scabbard (it's been errata'd to be 1d6 20/x2 btw) to get you up close to target while still being armed to be offensive or defend yourself until you're ready to perform the challenge and full-round iajutsu strike THE NEXT round. It's important to not get overeager with the challenge. So smack with the scabbard until you're ready. Iajutsu is only one shot though while most of the damage is coming from challenge, so lots of folks wonder what the point is mechanically speaking.

Personally, for a lightly armored katana-using swordsman who's still pretty mobile, I made a daring champion with slashing grace by level 3.
Str 14 Dex 18 initial stats at level 1, while two-handing a katana, damage and accuracy wasn't so bad until slashing grace kicks in.