Vicarious's page

Perhaps not elephants and horses, but goats? Surely!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggB33d0BLcY

This is not a Monk focused wholly on using a weapon, but close enough that I'll share my thoughts.

Take Martial Weapon Prof: Glaive (to replicate the chinese Gundao) and Combat Reflexes. AoO your opponents as they come into reach and unleash Flurry attacks with your feet/knees/head/whatever once they get into melee range.

Only a theory so far, but the image is awesome enough in my (slightly disturbed) head.

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Lovely initative! :)

..replace it with as you go up in levels (Dragon's Flame, Wyrm's Flame). Also the feat Desert Fire (I think) adds 1d6 to all Desert Wind strikes if you move 10' and all of the cone fire attacks like Hatchling's Flame are strikes.

Ah, beg your pardon then; didn't have the book with me at the time writing that post. Never been a fan of Desert Wind, though (emulates magic a tad too much for my taste).

Desert Fire does sound a bit over the top when used in conjunction with the CAoE abilities. Limit the damage to only be applicable to one target per round perhaps? That way it's similar to the Skirmish ability, but for Desert Wind strikes.

Addendum: as for advice/recommendations, my favourite character in 3.5 was an Elven Swordsage wielding a Thinblade (Curved Blade in Pathfinder) with Weapon Finesse. Concentrating on Diamond Mind and Shadow Hand disciplines, with a splash of Setting Sun and Tiger Claw.
Some strikes from the Diamond Mind discipline makes your target flat-footed for that attack and work well with Assassin's Stance from Shadow Hand, Diamond Mind also has excellent counters/strikes replacing normal checks/saves with Concentration checks. Shadow Hand brings means of getting away/moving around the battlefield with the Shadow Jaunt/Invisibility maneuvers. Setting Sun adds some great Counters/Stances and the strikes (and Blood in the Water, depending on how long you expect the fight to be) from Tiger Claw benefit greatly from your Thinblade's high crit-range.

A measly -14C (6.8F) here in the south-east of Sweden at the moment, had a call from my parents earlier though; -28C (-18.4F) and about 1.4m snow (what's that, 3.5' or something?) at their place. I'm sure glad I got home before that snap hit!

EDIT: To answer the thread title directly; I'm very cold, and calculating. At least that's what my players used to say.

I'd suggest letting the Swordsage use his initiator level in place of his BAB when qualifying for combat feats and removing the ability to recover expended maneuvers in combat.

Might want to toss in a few extra feats (perhaps based on his discipline focus?) as well, as the Swordsage is extremely feat starved.

On the issue of Swordsages outblasting the arcanists; Hatchling's Flame (I guess this was what you were referring to) deals 2d6 damage and doesn't scale in damage (no maneuvers do). I really don't think an 30' CAoE dealing 3 damage on average once per encounter is an issue, especially not after level 3 (the level it is available).